Hi good people. Hope you all enjoyed Christmas. I thank God mine was wonderful, spent with family. Hope New Year will be great to all of us too.
Parents! I wanna share this with you! If you have kids and live in Dar es Salaam, you must be well aware of the headache most mothers experience when it comes to househelps. I hope am not alone in this. Househelps are an issue.
I have three kids and the youngest one is almost one and a half years old. Being a working mother, I have been hiring two househelps to help me with both house work and looking after my kids, especially the youngest one.
On Monday morning, boxing day that is, one of my househelps who had hardly worked for two months told me she was needed at home as her mother is sick. This did not come as a schock since I had all along been expecting it! Don't they all usually claim to go visit a sick parent back home? At least it was not news! Moreover, having gotten this particular girl from an agent, I was least surprised. The contract which neither I nor the agent signed says incase the girl left before two months elapsed, I would get another one without having to pay the agent a commission which is usually equivalent to the girl's monthly salary. After having read the contract after obtaining the girl, I knew I would be with her for two months after which I was not sure she would stay. And I was right for here she was, five days prior to the contract time (of getting a new one without paying commission) claiming to have been called back home. Strangely, she said her brother who told her she was needed home said she should be returned to the agent's office. Where he would pick her perhaps?
I did not see why she should go back to the agent rather than to her brother's whom she claimed to have been living with before she came to work for me. My husband suggested I call the agent, who surprisingly asked me to take her back to the office! The agent even sent one of his colleagues to come pick the girl from my place.
Since I had heard the other househelp telling someone on the phone that she would probably be going home in january, I asked her as to when she also would be leaving. "End of this month. My mother has been sick all this time, it's just that I never told you." I needed not say anything.
As i narrated the incidence to colleagues at the office, someone happened to know the agent I was referring to! She had used his service and vowed to never do so again. She asked me how long the househelp had stayed at my place and when I told her two months, she said she knew it! That is normally what they do. She even told me that someone might have been waiting for the girl at the agent's office when she left my place. "Tha'ts exactly what they do," said my colleague. What the agent does is get in touch with the girls, ask them how they are getting along with their new boss, even visits our homes when we are at work and tells them what to say when they want to take the girl to a new employer. "How do you think they survive? They depend on the commission and so they have to give the girls to new employers as many times as possible".
Dear parents, you just need to be aware of these unfaithful people who make us rejoice when we get someone to leave our kids and homes with so we can work, while they are just there to dupe us. Who knows they could as well be making plans to break into our homes! We really need to be very careful.
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