City legislators pass home help regulation

The first regulation on home-help services in Shanghai was passed by the city’s legislature on Thursday.

It establishes an administration platform with information on home helpers working in the city.

It requires home help agencies to register and update their personal information, contracts and service ratings and ensure this is correct.

Agencies failing to register the information or give false information face fines of up to 50,000 yuan (US$7,134), the regulation says.

The platform should connect with the national personal credit information system, according to the regulation, meaning offenders could see their credit tarnished.

The regulation also requires the government to introduce standardized home-help service contracts and requires that all registered home helpers are issued a service card by agencies.

In terms of qualifications of home helpers, the regulation asks agencies to check the identity cards, skill certificates and health statements of their employees and those self-employed helpers they introduce to the customers.

Agencies will get allowances from the government for organizing training for home helpers, and trade organizations will introduce qualification levels for home helpers and corresponding wage levels.

Home-help services are defined in the regulation as paid services addressing households’ daily needs such as cleaning, cooking and care-taking whose customers are households and which are carried out in households.

The regulation also covers home helpers who are self-employed and not associated with agencies, but it has no intention to require such home helpers to also register themselves on the government platform.

The regulation, which will take effect from May 1, “encourages” home help service users hire home helpers through agencies.

Shen Weihua, vice director of Shanghai's commerce commission, which is responsible for constructing the administration platform, said it will be introduced on the same day the regulation takes effect as a public-interest project.

“The platform will protect the privacy of home helpers, so that the public can only view information such as the qualifications and customers’ ratings of a home helper,” Shen said.

In terms of the service cards, Shen said currently about 110,000 home helpers working for 147 larger agencies had possessed service cards, and the goal is to have all home helpers in Shanghai possessing such cards in three to five years' time.

It’s estimated that there are about 500,000 home helpers working in Shanghai.