Maid in India 1.0

"The ‘decimal’ is simply a dot within a number. Its position within a number determines what the number means to us. Just a shift to the right or left changes its meaning exponentially." 

Decimal Foundation, an NGO in Mumbai, cites the above as their inspiration. They serve an omnipresent and yet ignored section of society - domestic help. Do you know when was the last time your maid had a health check-up? Every woman associated with Maid in India gets free medical care every couple of months. To read more about the great work they are doing, and about my visit to their office, read on.

Maid in India (MII)  began operations in October 2010 with a pilot project in Lower Parel, Mumbai. I visited their office on 11th Aug, and this plus the following post will be based on my interactions with Khushboo. By designation, she is their technical administrator, but when she describes her work, she sounds like a one-woman army. So, here we go:

Method of operation:

MII has a tie-up with the club at the apartment complex they service. Whenever any new request for maid is received by the club, they communicate the same to MII. For this service, the club charges a registration fee from each client and also a fixed amount from each month’s salary of the maid. Hence, the registration fee from each new client gets distributed between MII and the club.

MII does an efficient household-maid matching process. They meet each and every client to ascertain the family’s nature and then decide whether they want to send an MII maid there. There have been instances when MII has rejected households if Sarita, the supervisor or Khushboo did not find the family suitable.

Whenever a new maid wishes to enroll with MII, she is asked to bring her documents for verification. Though each client is charged a registration fee, the maids are not charged anything. Usually they get ration cards as identity document, sometimes PAN card and in one case, even passport as the woman had worked in a Middle East country. MII gets police verification done for each woman they put on their roster.

Impact of MII

Maids are economically better. Salary increase of up to 300 percent. From earning ₹60 per hour, their salaries have gone up to ₹180-240 per hour. MII finds work for them nearer to their homes, thus reducing their travel time and expenditure. Most MII maids take only 15 min to reach their workspace. There are some exceptions where travel time goes up to 1-2 hours. These are cases where there is no work available in the area where the women reside.

Satisfaction

As Samiksha, a maid who has been with MII for four months said, “We don’t have to worry about the work anymore. Madam (Khushboo) takes care of us. There are no daily arguments with the household-owners”.  Samiksha’s husband fell down from a tree while working for the Maharashtra Electricity Board. MII helped in his treatment. Also, Samiksha is earning much higher after joining MII, and so is able to support her family solely with her earnings. 

MII matches each maid’s skill and interest to their work. So, a woman who likes cooking is not forced to work as a cleaner for lack of work. Also, they strive to find work according to the maid’s time availability. E.g. if a maid has to take care of her own household chores in the morning, she can find work through MII where only evening hours are required. This is made possible by an extensive network of clients and understanding their and maids’ requirements. Maids can work part-time or full-time as per their choice. A part-time worker works for around 3-4 hours per day while a full-time worker works for 8-12 hours per day.  MII has provided only one household with a 24 hour maid. They are cautious with 24-hour maid service as the client’s family needs to verified extensively before placement of the maid. They only agree on such services for families of small or moderate size, preferably with elderly guardians and kids to ensure the maid’s security and comfort.

Medical care

MII conducts medical camps. They conducted one camp in March and another is scheduled shortly. For the camp, 20 doctors were brought from KEM Hospital. (KEM is the largest hospital in Mumbai with 1800 beds) The medicines were donated by association of pharmacists. Some vitamin and calcium supplements are also given by pharmaceutical companies. Many pathology tests are conducted during these camps like haemoglobin, pap smear for detection of cervical cancer, UTI detection, TB detection etc. These facilities are available for the maids, their spouses and children. There was a case when a maid’s husband’s type 2 diabetes was detected in the camp. This service is extended to all women working as maids, irrespective of their association with MII.

MII plans to check each maid’s haemoglobin levels at the successive medical camps to check whether they are benefiting from the supplements.

My next post will talk about financial sustainability, scale of operations, challenges and organization structure of MII. 

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