Firms do little in dealing with cases of sexual harassment

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 was enacted to make it compulsory to form anti-sexual harassment committee in all offices with more than 10 members. However, it has emerged that only 29 such committees have been formed in the state as per the data available with the state Women and Child Development ministry.

Recently, the data has been submitted at an internal meeting of the ministry. In fact, of the 29 numbers of committees, 10 of them don’t have required manpower strength as recommended by the act.

“Of the listed committees, three committees don’t have a woman chairperson which is mandatory as per the act,” said an officer from the ministry.

As reported by The Asian Age reported on March 3 in the article, ‘City women second most harassed at workplace’, the city recorded second highest number of cases related to insult to the modesty of women on office premises with 10 cases in 2015.

“This shows the lack of interest of the government to tackle cases of harassment of women at workplace,” said Ujwala Kadrekar, senior programme officer and an advocate from Women’s Rights Initiative.

“We have tied up with few NGOs. It might take sometime but we are trying to form such committees in workplaces,” said Sanjay Kumar, principal secretary of the department.