By Kim Se-jeong
Caregivers who look after sick people at their homes are treated badly both financially and emotionally, often facing human rights abuses, according to a survey released Wednesday.
The Korean Women’s Development Institute and the Korean Domestic Workers’ Association conducted a survey of 156 caregivers and announced the results at a seminar organized by the National Human Rights Commission.
Caregivers are hired to take care of the elderly and sick. Their responsibilities range from helping them dress to changing diapers and assisting them with showers.
More than 56 percent of the respondents said they had been humiliated at work by their clients and clients’ families who treated them “like they were slaves.”
The survey revealed that 30.8 percent of the caregivers had been sexually harassed, while 34 percent answered that they were constantly monitored through surveillance cameras installed at the clients’ homes. Most of them did not know before starting work that there were cameras monitoring them, while only seven said that their clients asked for their consent about having the cameras turned on.
The survey also showed that the caregivers spent money out of their own pockets for job-related training. The average amount each spent for this training was 435,000 won.
Their average wage was 7,368 won per hour, lower than other domestic workers ― maids receive 11,359 won per hour and nannies, 12,216 won, according to a related survey.
“Domestic workers are invisible in the legal labor market,” Choi Young-mi, a researcher at the association, said.
Such people are not recognized as workers in official statistics because they are usually contracted one-to-one with the employer. Thus, most of them do not receive social benefits such as medical insurance.
No accurate figure is available, but it is estimated that about 300,000 Koreans are working as domestic workers. “It is particularly a problem because they do not receive any assistance for their medical treatments,” Cho said.