The owner of a popular parody X account has claimed that they were shamed after disclosing how much they pay their domestic worker, despite it being well above South Africa’s minimum wage.
X USER SHAMED OVER DOMESTIC WORKER SALARY REVEAL
According to a parody account using the handle @AbdurahmanCape – named after the late politician Abdullah Abdurahman – they officially let their domestic worker go after being “shamed” over disclosing the wages.
The tweep posted, “I used to have a full-time maid. She was paid R5 500 per month to work Monday through Friday. Some people on Twitter told me I’m not paying enough; I should be paying R8000 minimum. I couldn’t afford that, so I decided to let her go and clean up myself. Now she earns R0.”
The tweep added: “I was genuinely tired of seeing posts from the maid police on Twitter, so I decided I would stop ‘exploiting’ my maid and do housework myself. Now I have an extra R5500 every month”.
The tweet – which received nearly 1 million views – was met with a barrage of comments. Most of them came from South Africans who could relate to the post regarding domestic worker wages.
@agitatedpenguin: “This is a dilemma…On one hand, paying people basically non-living wages feels wrong and exploitative. Contrarily, if you raise the cost of domestic workers, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of South Africans, can no longer afford domestic workers, and therefore, those workers lose their jobs”.
@Nkanyiso14: “A similar story happened to our maid. She was comparing herself with people who had been working for 23 years. We couldn’t afford her rates anymore.”
@MacDoodleRPC: “Same story all over South Africa. Me too. Clean-up myself”
@AnthonyVerwey: “We have had to do the same. It isn’t easy and requires lots of time budgeting, but it is the reality of minimum wages. We just could no longer afford it. Our former domestic worker is now a net grant beneficiary, which I suspect is the end goal with these laws.”
@granny_is_right: “I haven’t had a maid for 11 years now. It is too expensive.”
WHAT IS THE MINIMUM WAGE IN SOUTH AFRICA?
In February, domestic workers in South Africa received a pay hike, which was officially gazetted.
The 8.5% minimum wage increase means that employees’ wages would increase from R25,42 for each ordinary hour worked to R27,58 per hour. According to the Department of Employment and Labour, employing someone for more than 24 hours a month is considered full-time.
The wage hike came into effect on 1 March.
Assuming a domestic worker works for a minimum of 160 hours per month – broken down into eight hours per day, 20 days per month – their monthly minimum wage is required to be no less than R4 412,80.
The daily rate of eight hours amounts to R220,64.
HOW MUCH DO YOU PAY YOUR DOMESTIC WORKER?
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