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Artigo

16 Fev 2023

Author:
Kim Harrisberg, Bukola Adebayo and Menna Farouk, Sunday Times South Africa

Gig workers across Africa face abuse & exploitation as house-cleaning service apps take off; incl. co. comments

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"Concerns over abuse and exploitation as house-cleaning service apps take off"

Women who mop, sweep and clean homes across Africa are riding a new wave of digital platforms that promise flexible work and fresh opportunity — but critics say the fast-growing apps only expose the gig workers to age-old abuse and exploitation...

The platforms say they create much needed jobs, but act only as mediators, not actual employers, a scenario that can expose domestic workers to psychological pressure, financial exploitation and physical risk —and can let bad employers or arms-length platforms evade responsibility when things go wrong...

Gig workers on sites such as SweepSouth say they fear being kicked off the apps if they dare to speak out against practices that are intrinsic to the platforms and which they say can be exploitative. Inadequate safety protocols, penalties for sick days, low pay and denial of lunch and bathroom breaks are just some of the concerns shared with the Thomson Reuters Foundation by more than a dozen app-based cleaners, former employees and customers...

Among the biggest platforms are South Africa's SweepSouth, Nigeria's Eden Life and Egypt's Filkhedma, promising a lifeline to desperate job seekers in regions with few other openings...

The biggest bugbear for most gig workers is fair pay — or the lack of it...

SweepSouth said its earnings model took into account a host of factors from supply and demand, location, the cleaner's performance rating, and the date and length of any job...

In Nigeria, 22-year-old Dare has worked for both local cleaning app Eden Life and SweepSouth, which launched in Nigeria in July 2022. Eden Life was founded in 2019 with 70+ domestic workers. SweepSouth paid him N7,000 (about R275) for half a day scraping paint and cement stains off floors, windows and toilets of a newly built three-bedroom apartment in Lagos.

The worker said he received no extra compensation, despite logging a complaint about a job he called far more strenuous than the simple task outlined on the app...

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