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'You can't make your maid take an HIV test'
Jo-Anne Smetherham. 14 March 2003. Cape Times. Republished courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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When your domestic worker is busy in the kitchen, she could cut herself with a knife. What if she is HIV-positive - and looking after your children?
This is the dilemma facing middle-class South Africans, increasing numbers of whom are firing their domestic workers on discovering that they are HIV-positive.
It is illegal, however, to fire a domestic or any worker for being HIV-positive, and illegal to demand an HIV test as a prerequisite for employment.
Both practices are becoming increasingly common in the employment of domestic workers, said the Domestic Workers' Union and the provincial labour department.
"A lot of domestic workers reported last year that prospective employers were demanding an HIV test," said South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union general secretary Myrtle Witbooi. "We know of three cases where employers took the women off for tests.
"One, last month, tested positive and was fired. She is a young woman with a child."
The Cape Times has heard of several similar cases from HIV/AIDS counsellors and other sources.
"I think employers are mostly scared if they have children," Witbooi said. "If an employee has HIV, both parties must go for counselling to learn how to cope. They should sit down and discuss it thoroughly."
Workers facing any form of discrimination, including being fired or not hired because they are HIV-positive, can take their cases to the Council for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), said Ivan Polson, a labour inspector at the provincial labour department.
A domestic worker would have a case for the CCMA even if she was just taken away from child-minding duties because she was HIV-positive and given housework instead, he said.
Polson described a recent case in which a domestic was taken for an HIV test by an employer, but told she was being tested for tuberculosis.
She was fired when her employer discovered she was HIV-positive.
Nombeko (not her real name), an HIV-positive domestic worker in central Cape Town, spoke to the Cape Times on Thursday about the difficulties she has faced "so that my employers can understand".
"At one house I was told I had to have my own separate cup, bowl and knife and fork, which are kept in a separate cupboard, because I have HIV," she said. "They are scared that I could have a mouth ulcer, or something else, and they could get the disease. They are not educated about HIV/AIDS. They don't know the pain this makes me feel.
"In December I left another family, whose baby I was looking after, because I knew that I would either be fired, or else always treated as a danger. When I told them I had HIV they took the baby and the whole family off for testing."
Said Polson: "Everybody has the responsibility of training their domestic workers, making them aware of the danger zones. Science has found that the chances of passing on the disease through ordinary household activities is slim." |
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