How much money South Africans pay their domestic workers

 ·28 Sep 2015

News24 users living in the Western Cape pay their domestic workers more per day than those in any other province, a News24 survey has revealed.

With over 12 000 responses from a survey conducted earlier this year of the payment habits of News24 users, the Western Cape trumps when it came to paying helping hands over the course of one shift, averaging R188.50 per day.

Second was Gauteng with R172 a day, while KwaZulu-Natal came in third, averaging R151 a day.

It was not good news for domestic workers in the Northern Cape and North West, however, with homeowners in the northern provinces paying their domestic workers R120 and R128 respectively a shift on average.

The recommended minimum wage set by the South African Labour Department in December 2014 is R2 065.47 per month, or R476.68 per week, or R10.95 per hour, for a standardised 45-hour week.

The full results from the News24 survey:

Province Rands per shift Responses
Western Cape R188.50 3 391
Gauteng R172.00 6 333
KwaZulu-Natal R151.00 1 321
Limpopo R148.00 285
Eastern Cape R133.00 535
Mpumalanga R130.00 384
Free State R130.00 332
North West R128.00 251
Northern Cape R120.00 145

Domestic Wage Calculator

A new tool created by data-gathering company Code4SA can help you determine what your domestic worker needs as a bare minimum to sustain her family.

Using multiple variables which can be adjusted to your liking, the Living Wage Calculator aggregates a total monthly wage needed for your domestic worker to support her household based on her family’s specific circumstances.

Some of these adjustable variables include: the number of dependents in the household; transport costs; healthcare; housing; education, and four others, all of which contribute to calculating a “fair wage” for that household either per day, per week, or per month.

The figure isn’t a mandatory gauge for what people should be paying. Rather, it is just an indication of exactly what is needed in South Africa to provide the bare necessities for any family, and how the recommended wages set for domestic workers falls well below that.

The wage tool can be found at News24.

News24

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Are you paying your domestic worker enough?

SA domestic worker minimum wage increased

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