THE continued abuse of child household services workers speaks of a dangerous gap in law enforcement despite protective policies. Rights organisations and experts have raised alarm over the government inaction as violence has escalated. In the first half of 2025, seven workers were killed, four of them aged below 18, as monthly Bangladesh Mahila Parishad data show. In June, a 13-year-old girl reportedly committed suicide at her employer鈥檚 house at Dhanmondi in Dhaka. A few months earlier in October 2024, 13-year-old was rescued from a house at Bashundhara with burn injuries and missing teeth. Her employer was later arrested. The death of 15-year-old Preeti Urang at a journalist鈥檚 house in 2024 sparked off widespread outrage, especially after it had been revealed that another girl had previously been injured in the same house. According to the Domestic Workers鈥� Rights Network, female workers account for 95 per cent of the work force and 40 per cent of them are children. Yet, there exists no institutional mechanism to ensure their safety, health or education.
The 2015 Domestic Workers Welfare Policy and the Children Act 2013, both promising in text, remain largely unimplemented as perpetrators continue to escape justice. This is not a case of legal absence but one of chronic enforcement failure and social complicity. The 2015 policy entails to basic rights including protection from abuse, regulated working hours, paid leave and maternity benefits to household services workers. It has, however, remained on paper for nearly a decade, with no oversight or enforcement mechanism. The central monitoring cell set up under the labour ministry has failed to meet or publish a single update. Most domestic workers are hired on verbal contracts, making it easier for employers to evade responsibility. Child workers are especially vulnerable, isolated in private houses, deprived of education and routinely subjected to verbal, physical and sexual abuse. The death, if any, in such cases are often labelled as 鈥榮uicide鈥� without adequate investigation. Financial settlements and social stigma keep many families silent. The failure to implement policies, prosecute offenders or include workers into mainstream labour regulation points to a vacuum aggravated by social neglect. Bangladesh鈥檚 refusal to ratify ILO Conventions 189 and 190 further delays global commitments to decent and violence-free work. Without legal, administrative and ideological reform, houses will continue to operate as unregulated sites of exploitation.
The authorities should, therefore, act without delay. ILO convention ratification, full implementation the policy and a mandatory child worker registration and oversight mechanism are vital first steps. There should be a broad-based social movement to dismantle the cultural acceptability of child labour in household services and the violence it normalises.
