Amid the rough sailing week in Congress brought by the debates over the controversial Reproductive Health Bill, Cagayan Rep. Jack Enrile remains optimistic on the fate of his Batas Kasambahay even as he calls Malacanang to fast-track its signing.

“With the able leadership of both Labor Committee Chairpersons of the House and of the Senate Bicameral Conference Committee, we were able to make this advocacy into a concrete legislation and passed through the Bicam. And I hope that the President will expedite its signing at the soonest possible time,” Enrile said.

“This is a landmark legislation that guarantees protection for more than 2 million domestic workers in the country,” Enrile added. “At its best, Batas Kasambahay provides a measure of dignity to those who belong to the domestic work industry. As a matter of fact, in some families, they are more than just household helpers; they are already treated like family,” he stressed.

The young Enrile, who is now serving on his 4th term, is the original and principal author of House Bill 553 or the Magna Carta for Household Helpers, one of the 17 bills on domestic workers rights which was eventually consolidated into House Bill 6144 and was subsequently approved by the House on its third and final reading last September.

The measure took 15 long years from the time it was first filed by Enrile in 1999 (11th Congress) until its recent approval by the 15th Congress last September.  The Senate counterpart, Senate Bill No. 78, was passed as early as December 2010.

An administration-backed measure and certified “urgent” by President Aquino during his State of the Nation Address on July 2011, Batas Kasambahay effectively provides a set of standard protection for almost 2 million domestic workers in the country.

Under the provision of HB 6144, employers are mandated to enter into a contract with domestic workers, and to register the name of domestic workers in the barangay. Employers are further required to pay wages of domestic workers in cash, and to provide pay slips to their household help. They are also required to register their household helpers as members of SSS, Pag-IBIG, and Philhealth.

The proposed legislation also identifies following acts against domestic workers as unlawful. These include requiring domestic workers to make deposits, where deductions will be made in case they lose or destroy household materials, debt bondage or requiring a person to render service to a household for an unspecified amount of time as a form of debt payment, hiring minors as household help, assigning domestic workers to non-household work, and interfering with a worker’s freedom to dispose his or her wages as they wish, as well as withholding the wages of a domestic worker.

Enrile is optimistic that after the consolidated version of the House and Senate has been ratified by the bicameral conference committee, it is only a matter of days before Batas Kasambahay is signed into law by President Aquino.

“At the end of the day, this measure hopes to give equal opportunities to this once informal and unrecognized sector of society and to make each and every household helper realize that they too have rights,” Enrile said.*