“Many industries, organisations and educational institutions still remain unaware of the rules that govern the formation and functioning of an Internal Complaints Committee to address sexual harassment,” said Shyamal Mukherjee, advocate and partner at Fox Mandal and Associates, here on Tuesday.
He was addressing a seminar on the legal overview and employers’ perspective of the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act, 2013, organised by the Indian Woman Network (IWN), Madurai Chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
“It is even more important that the complaints committee is trained to handle complaints and situations pertaining to incidences of sexual harassment. Decisions taken by an inadequately trained committee will lead to disastrous consequences,” he stated.
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Questions were raised on whether industries with all-male workers needed such committees and whether the committee included issues of students, apart from employees in an educational institution.
Stating that many educational institutions were unaware that they could form an Internal Complaints Committee as well, Mr. Shyamlal said that the recent alleged incident of sexual harassment by a professor of the Madurai Kamaraj University showed the necessity of such a committee.
“An Internal Complaints Committee is equipped with the powers of civil courts and are an absolute necessity in every organisation or institution. Apart from the employees, the committee is also required to consider complaints from visitors as well,” Mr. Shyamlal explained.
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“Without an effective committee to handle such complaints, the workplace would also become a hostile one resulting in skilled manpower quitting their jobs which could impact economic development,” he added.
During the session, many participants who were representatives of various industries and educational institutions in the district said that they were unaware of such guidelines which existed.
“We have a complaints redressal forum in our institution but no official Internal Complaints Committee,” a representative of an educational institution said.
The participants said that regular awareness programmes like this were required at regular intervals.
“Every industry or employer should conduct such programmes to create an awareness of the laws in place to address such sensitive issues. Victims of harassment often remain in the dark and don’t know how to proceed with legal recourse or redressal,” opined Geetha Sivasubramanian, Head of the Chemistry Department of the Velammal College of Engineering.