‘SHe-box’ (sexual harassment electronic box) — hosted on the website of the Women and Child Development Ministry, also seeks to ensure “effective implementation” of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
The Women and Child Development ministry on Monday launched an online
platform to enable women employees of the Central government to file
complaints related to sexual harassment at the workplace.
Union
minister Maneka Gandhi said the platform will cater to Central
government employees in the beginning and thereafter, its ambit will be
widened to include the private sector as well.
“We are also going
to soon conduct a national survey to assess the nature and magnitude of
sexual harassment at the workplace,” the minister of woman and child
development said after launching the portal at her office here.
The
online complaint management system — ‘SHe-box’ (sexual harassment
electronic box) — hosted on the website of the Women and Child
Development Ministry, also seeks to ensure “effective implementation” of
the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition
and Redressal) Act, 2013.
Once a complaint is submitted to the
‘SHe-Box’, it will be directly sent to the internal complaints committee
(ICC) of the ministry/department/PSU/autonomous body etc concerned,
having jurisdiction to inquire into the matter.
The ICC will take
action as prescribed under the Act and update the status of the
complaint. The portal is also an effort to provide “speedier remedy” to
women facing sexual harassment at the workplace, as envisaged under the
sexual harassment Act, a senior official of the ministry said.
The
WCD minister also instructed officials to make the portal as
“interactive” as possible. The portal should offer a list of follow-up
details so that the employee gets to know the exact status of the
complaint, she told officials.
The Union government has 30.87 lakh
employees. According to the Census of Central Government Employees
2011, women constitute 10.93 per cent of the total force.
“To
begin with, central government women employees can file complaints, but
we are going to widen the ambit to include the private sector as well.
We just need to make a few changes in our online interface. Once it is
done, employees from private companies would also be able to lodge
complaints,” Ms. Gandhi said.
The decision to host an online
platform for sexual harassment cases was taken by the WCD Ministry in
October last year after the minister received complaints from women
employees in various ministries. Interacting with reporters later, Ms.
Gandhi said, “If the internal complaints committees (on sexual
harassment) is working, then we are out of the picture totally. But
people, who will come to us, are those women employees who work where
there are no committees or there’s one for the sake of it or composed of
people who are outrightly negative,” she said.
The sexual
harassment Act mandates that all workplaces with more than 10 workers
constitute an internal complaints committee for receiving complaints of
sexual harassment.
“We are not treading on anybody’s toes. The
idea of this portal is to remedy the cases before they reach the level
where legal action may be warranted,” she said. Ms. Gandhi also asked
officials to include a section in the portal where complainants can
“vent” their grievances.
On the proposed pan-India survey, she
said the idea was initiated after an NGO came up with a small—scale
study on matter related to women.
“We will put up the survey on
out portal as well as our Facebook page and Twitter handle to reach out
to as many people as possible. Some people say installation of CCTV
cameras is a harassment. So, we need to to define it so that there are
no frivolous cases,” she said.
The minister also said the definition of what constitutes a case of sexual harassment must be made available on the portal.
Source : http://www.thehindu.com
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