The Chief Executive Officer of Greymate Care, Chika Madubuko, has shed light on why people who hire underage house helps should be punished.

While speaking with Mobola Sadiq on why some Nigerians don’t like entrusting vulnerable family members into the hands of care providers, the sad realities of underage home helps and other issues, Madubuko says, she finds it depressing whenever she read stories of caregivers maltreating or neglecting their ‘wards’.

Chika Madubuko is a business professional, tech enthusiast, job creation advocate and social reformer who has a Master’s degree in Bioengineering from the University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom and business experience spanning across three continents and blue-chip multinational companies including Amazon and Diageo.

She says, “I find them very depressing to say the least. Anyone caught engaged in such activities should be punished. I always wonder what went wrong in those people’s lives for them to comfortably carry out such dastardly acts without remorse.”

On what she feels about employing underage home helps, she says, “This is legally wrong and people who are found doing this should be brought to book. Those kids wake up as early as 4am and go to bed as late as 11 pm. They attend different schools from those of the children of their boss, dress differently and their self-confidence is equally squashed. A lot of people hide under the guise of helping these minors and claim they send them to school and give them better lives in exchange for their services. This is untrue because if they were truly philanthropists, they would help these kids and hire a legal home help since the kid’s role is not just servitude. However, you find they do not want to hire a grown-up and they come up with excuses such as being worried that a philandering husband would get a female home help pregnant.