LAST week, one of our readers wrote a letter as a warning about employing domestic workers without properly screening them.
This resident had employed someone through an agency and, after 18 months, discovered that she had stolen valuable items to value of R250 000 from the house.
It is quite a common practice in South Africa to allow domestic workers into our homes, to have contact with our children and gain intimate knowledge of our family, our routines and our security. Our reader is correct in that it is unusual to do proper background checks and screening for these sensitive positions. This is quite strange for a country besieged by crime.
There is a lot of confusion regarding the right to privacy and background checks, and complex labour laws have made it even more muddled. Once a person is employed, you can’t suddenly turn to them and force them to undergo criminal background checks without their permission because that would be an unfair labour practice. You can’t go and lift their fingerprints off a glass and take it to the police to do a search, that’s an invasion of privacy.
The solution is to conduct a criminal check on any potential candidate before you hire them.
The common belief is that you can’t really get these things done, or that it’s too slow, or too expensive, or that you don’t have the right to do it.
It is not true, it can be done, a criminal check has to be verified by using digitally captured fingerprints which are checked against the police database.
There are private companies which will do this for you at a very reasonable rate of around R200, which is a small price to pay for peace of mind. The process should not take longer than 48 hours.
One of these background screening companies has said that one in 10 candidates who were screened have criminal records, which brings us to an important question: Shouldn’t convicted criminals who have served their sentence be given the chance to rebuild their lives? On the other hand, you have a right to know who you are inviting into your home and a right to make an informed decision.
