Labour Minister to overhaul colonial era labour laws pertaining to children

By Saman Indrajith

Minister of Labour Nimal Siripala de Silva says the laws will be enacted within the next three months to raise the minimum age for employment of a person in the country to 18 years.

Representatives of the Department of Labour, the Attorney General’s Department, the Ministry of Justice, the Children and Women’s Bureau, the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) participated in the discussion on the future course of action to be taken to protect the rights of domestic workers at the Ministry of Labor on Tuesday (27).

The Minister also instructed the officials to expedite the process of enforcing the regulations required to revise the list of hazardous jobs already prepared by the Legal Draftsman’s Department through the regulations to be introduced under the Employment of Women, Youth and Children Act.

The 150-year-old rules pertaining to the domestic service community would be changed and new rules would be introduced for their welfare, he said.

It was also decided to require an employer to furnish information regarding a person employed in a household to the District Labor Officer and to include domestic workers in the National Minimum Wage Act and to amend the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees’ Trust Fund (ETF) Acts to cover domestic workers.

New regulations will also be formulated regarding the working hours, leisure time and leave for the domestic worker community and to ensure safe and fair service inspections for them.

It was also decided to introduce a code of conduct for domestic workers to ensure gratuity payments.

The Minister emphasised that the objective of all those measures was to ensure the professional dignity of the domestic service community.