ISLAMABAD – The business entities in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi will take active steps for enforcement of legislation to protect women against harassment at workplace.
This was assured by senior representatives of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Islamabad and Rawalpindi at the launching of a report titled “Leaders of change: drawing lessons from case studies of organizations with anti-sexual harassment policies” arranged by ‘Alliance Against Sexual Harassment’ (AASHA) here on Monday.
President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) Mehfoz Elahi, President Islamabad Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IWCCI) and Mian Muhammad Attique assured that they would ask all their members to implement the law within their organizations, adding that this legislation was a milestone in Pakistan’s social history and will make it easier for women to navigate public places, along with changing people’s idea of the relationship between men and women.
Margaret Reads Rounds, Acting Country Director of International Labour Organization (ILO) in Pakistan said sexual harassment was a violation of the fundamental rights of workers, a safety and health issue, a problem of discrimination, an unacceptable working condition and a form of violence, primarily but not exclusively against women.
She said sexual harassment at the workplace was increasingly being recognized as an occupational hazard and a violation of human rights, which seriously undermined equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women in Pakistan.
She said ILO will continue to work in countries around the world to provide practical assistance to enable an environment where labour policies promote and foster gender equality, adding that their project ‘Towards gender parity in Pakistan’ was aimed at raising awareness about sexual harassment.
She said the Employers Federation of Pakistan was sensitizing employers on the Act and has also advocated its adoption. As a result, 54 employers in Pakistan have endorsed compliance with the Act and 21 were in the process of doing the same.
She said that the ILO had also developed a toolkit for trainers that specifically addressed issues of sexual harassment at workplace and how to avoid and prevent them.
“I am pleased to note that under one of our pilot projects ‘Decent transport for working women’ we are seeing changes in behaviors by transporters, bus drivers, conductors and male passengers on a pilot route of 10 public vans in Rawalpindi. “They are becoming increasingly aware and respect the rights of female passengers to travel safely without facing harassment,” she said.
Dr Fouzia Saeed, founding member AASHA, while reading out excerpts from the report said sexual harassment at the workplace was a form of discrimination that violated the fundamental human rights of citizens and had been experienced by Pakistani women at places as diverse as factories, farms, fields, offices, hospitals and the parliament, where they had been intimidated, assaulted, abused and manipulated by those who had authority over their conditions of employment.
She said although pro-equality and anti-discriminatory provisions were made in a number of ILO conventions and the constitution, there were no laws that specifically defined sexual harassment or took sexual harassment in the workplace into account until the beginning of 2010 when the government passed an amendment to section 509 of the PPC making sexual harassment in any location including workplace a crime in Pakistan and providing for punishment up to three years imprisonment and fine up to Rs 0.5 million for the offenders.
