Plea In Delhi High Court Seeks Constitution Of Welfare Board For Home Nurses & Domestic Workers

The petition highlights the plight of Home Nurses and Domestic workers, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. The issues raised in the petition are said to be based on complaints received from those working as home nurses and news reports reflecting upon the gravity of the plight of domestic workers.

The petition states that home nurses, who are mostly females, often hail from poor and uneducated background and the agencies that hire them take advantage of this fact. The situation of domestic workers is not different, it says. The Petitioner organisation claims that home nurse recruitment agencies take commission every month from their monthly salary. As per the petitioners, this practice of taking a share from the salary every month must be deprecated and put to a halt.

While also highlighting the issue of non-payment of salary faced by these groups, the petition states:

"In the recent past we as an organization have come across number of complaints particularly pertaining to non-payment of outstanding salary. It is emphasized that in most cases the recruitment agencies that place the home nurses with an employer abandon at the time when they are pursuing to get their balance amounts. It may not be out of place to mention that post Covid, the cases of denial of salary to home nurses has increased, and therefore there is a need to stem the practice of denying remuneration after availing services from home nurses and domestic servants."

The plea states that the law reform commission of Kerala headed by Ret. Justice K.T. Thomas had suggested constitution of a Welfare Board specifically for Home Nurses and Domestic Workers. In light of the same, the petitioners believe that there is a dire need to conduct a survey to ascertain whether the agencies that are providing employment opportunities to home nurses and domestic workers have the requisite registration/license or not. Further, petitioners have also called for a constitution of a Welfare Board at a Pan-India level.

While highlighting the plight of these vulnerable sections, the petition stated that–

"The working conditions imposed on home nurses and domestic workers particularly during the pandemic violated their right to livelihood with dignity implied under Article 21…the State under Article 42 of the Constitution have the onus to ensure just and humane condition of work."

Case Title: DISTRESS MANAGEMENT COLLECTIVE (DMC) v. UOI & Anr.