One of the greatest risks households in Nigeria face today is the dependence on unknown and unverified persons for domestic services leading to severe risks to life and properties.
Nigerian households employ domestic helps in droves to help with many tasks and can afford to have on average two to three domestic helps working for them in one capacity or other. Job responsibilities include; Drivers, Cooks, Maids, Security Men, Gate Keepers, Child Minders, Lesson coaches, etc. Unfortunately, most families have been disappointed with the quality of services provided by the domestic staff they employed, and most have been subjected to theft, job abandonment, poor services, incompetence, and in extreme cases risk to their families, like poisoning, kidnapping and even murder.
There have been many cases reported in the Newspapers where domestic helps engage in fraudulent activities and once discovered, disappear into thin air before they can be apprehended, then end up with another unsuspecting family, who have no way of checking their employment history nor past infractions. They continue their criminal behavior knowing they could continue to have unfettered access to unsuspecting families undetected due to the lax checks in the current environment.
Name identifications are ineffective, because they go by various aliases, and assume a name of choice when they apply for employment.
Currently there is no independent way of verifying the accuracy and authenticity of “who they say they are” and the name under which they present themselves. In a nutshell checkmypeople.com was created in response to this “pain point” which most families have experienced at one time or the other, and that is “..dependence on unknown and unverified persons for domestic services leading to severe risks to life and properties”
We explored ways to leverage technology to address this very dire social problem. But first, we had to get to the root of the problem. Two main issues come to mind!
First; the way we recruit people is by word of mouth, and not based on any data or records.
Secondly, we as employers do not communicate with each other. This “wall of silence” is the reason why these criminal elements can move from home to home, committing crimes, because there are no records of these crimes available to prospective employers.
As a result, someone is able to commit a crime in one home, gets fired, and quickly gets a job in another home. With no knowledge of their past, the unsuspecting family bring them in and they are able to commit and even more serious crime.
So with the records maintained by current and past employers, communication is established with prospective employers, who are able to see the employment history of each applicant, in order to assess the risk associated with each, and if there is any criminal record in their history