Salt & Truth documents the lives and travails of ‘House Girls’ in new project

A new documentary, ‘House Girls,’ trailing the lives and travails of minors working as house helps across Nigeria is scheduled for release soon.

Salt & Truth documents the lives and travails of ‘House Girls’ in new project

John Adewusi and Jola Ayeye’s ‘Salt & Truth’ production outfit has taken time to document the lives and travails of underaged house helps in a new project, ‘House Girls’. 

The documentary’s trailer shows the lives of the typical house girl using a minor as the mirror for several house helps scattered across Nigeria. 

According to a statement from Salt & Truth, the documentary will explore the economy and underbelly of the domestic service industry; from the agents, who scout, find, procure and transport these children, to the parents and guardians who release their wards to these strangers for “work” thousands of miles away, and finally to the members of the Nigerian populace who “employ them” in their homes. 

The statement went further to say, “This is a fixture that has become very common in the average Nigerian home. The Nigerian domestic service industry in Nigeria is awash with minors. In millions of homes in Nigeria, children are employed as domestic staff and spend many hours performing menial tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry. In an unregulated industry, they are subject to all forms of horrific abuse, from verbal to physical and sexual."

Continuing, the production company states that the situation is pathetic and calls for serious concern.

“This painful video shows the daily routine of millions of children working in homes as housemaids. Many people have them in their homes. While underage and denied a childhood of their own, they cook, clean, look after us. Their existence in our homes is a well-accepted​ norm.”