Law Protecting Women From Sexual Harassment At Workplace
The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition & Redressal) Act and Rules, 2013 (“Law”) mandates every Employer to “provide a safe working environment at the workplace which shall include safety from the persons coming into contact at the workplace” (Section 19 (a)).
For this, it provides that the aggrieved can file a complaint of sexual harassment within the organization itself and seek redressal via the internal mechanism. For the success of this, all organizations (whether public or private) having 10 or more employees (whether permanent, temporary, ad-hoc, consultants, interns or contract workers irrespective of gender) are mandated under Law to comply with certain requirements.
The Supreme Court has expressed disquiet at what it called the “serious lapses” in the implementation of the the Sexual Harassment of Women at Work Place (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, even a decade after it’s enactment.
- The Supreme Court expresses concern over “serious lapses” in the implementation of the POSH Act, even after a decade of its enactment.
- The court considers the current state of affairs as regrettable and issues directions to strengthen the implementation of the POSH Act.
- The court emphasizes the importance of educating sexual harassment victims about the complaint registration process and the procedures involved.
- The Supreme court also issued directives as to the compulsory formation of ICC (Internal Complaints Committee) for all institutions/body/company,etc
- Training of employees, formation of redressal mechanism and full compliance is discussed in detail.
The bench stated – “This is indeed a sorry state of affairs and reflects poorly on all the State functionaries, public authorities, private undertakings, organizations and institutions that are duty-bound to implement the PoSH Act in letter and spirit.
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