A metropolitan lifestyle leaves you burdened with a strenuous schedule and lesser time to accommodate household work. Domestic staff support a critical need in a busy lifestyle, and this holds true for our Bollywood celebs as well. The popular platform that offers domestic help online and regulates payments and tenure of the same, has published certain cases where actors have apparently harassed their house helps.
In a blog piece reportedly written by the CEO of the company Anupam Sinhal, the company mentioned 5 celebrity case studies, of ill-treatment of domestic staff, but without mentioning the names of the celebrities involved.
Trying to alert the ambitious start-ups, the post warned them against celebrity clients with these examples. Have a look.
Case Study 1
She came to us looking for a male helper at a budget of Rs. 4000 per month! This is even lower than the minimum wage of Maharashtra. We refused and told her that we wont be able to provide a helper in this budget (wonder where does all the money go which earns through her movies). After a lot of negotiation she finally agreed upon Rs.10000 per month (which was still on the lower side considering she has a 4-bhk home and the helper needed to clean the home 6 times everyday! Unfortunately the mother of the helper passed away. The helper was from Bihar and he wanted to go back to Bihar to perform the last rituals. He promised to be back after 15 days since he wanted the money to support his family. The “celebrity” called us and told us that she wont let the person go till the time we send in a replacement. This was at 5.45pm on a Saturday evening. Our office is shut on Sundays. We promised to send a replacement on Monday and requested her to release the helper since he has to go for his mothers last ritual. Guess what! She did not. She could not care less. We did give a replacement on Monday. But the helper missed out on her mothers last ritual.BookMyBai
Case Study 2
She has a huge home in Mumbai suburbs and she hired a maid through us. The extent of torture and harassment to the maids was so high that we replaced maids 7 times. Each maid worked for 7-10 days before giving up and quitting. She drives a 3 crore car. Doesn’t give food to her domestic help. NO FOOD!!! Really!! Drink tea and eat bread 3 times a day.BookMyBai
Case Study 3
Physical abuse of the maid was almost a daily affair. As soon as we got to know, we asked the maid to leave as soon as possible. When she came to our office, we could see physical marks on her body of physical abuse. We supported her and wanted to file a complaint in the local police station. But she asked us to let it go. She didn’t have the time to run to the police station every time the police calls her.BookMyBai
The blog narrates a couple of more cases wherein domestic staff provided by them have been ill-treated by Bollywood stars. However, while ensuring a blanket ban on providing any Bollywood celeb their services is a good move, some of these cases call for naming and shaming. For example, a case of physical abuse should have been reported to the police by the platform on behalf of the employee. In absence of any such strong steps taken, a blind blog citing anonymous perpetrators can only cause temporary sensationalism rather than any constructive measures to change the way these celebs actually behave with their house help.
(Source of case studies - Bookmybai)
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