Barely nine months into her new job at an IT firm in Bangalore and 26 year old Savita Singh (name changed) had reached a point when she couldn’t tolerate her manager’s sexual advances anymore.

“He would ask me to stay back after office hours on the pretext of finishing up some urgent work and later ask me out to dinner. Despite refusing his advances, he continued sending me lewd text messages and called me at odd hours. I resigned two months ago” she told Business Line .

Clueless

Ironically, one year after the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 received Presidential assent on April 23, 2013, organisations across the country are tardy in implementing the Act.

“I have surveyed 125 companies across sectors in the Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai-Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad. Most of the companies are clueless on how to implement the Act and have put in place the most basic requirement — an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC),” said Pankaj Sharma, a US-based global expert on workplace sexual harassment issues.

The Act requires organisations to appoint a senior woman from within as the presiding officer of the ICC and a minimum of two members from among the employees who are committed to women’s causes, have social work experience or legal knowledge; and one member from an NGO which is familiar with sexual harassment issues.

Women must constitute 50 per cent of the ICC.

Royal Orchid Hotels, which employs 30 per cent women in its 26 hotels across India, does not have an external member from an NGO.

“We have cameras, late night escorted drops for women and duty managers are told to watch out for untoward behaviour,” said Anjali Upadhyay, the group’s VP – HR.

Nirmala Menon, CEO of Interweave Consulting, a diversity and inclusion solutions firm, points out that most companies are still trying to get their ICCs in place.

“Most companies have online awareness programmes for their employees on what constitutes sexual harassment and are approaching us to conduct face-to-face workshops. We are also assisting MNCs and domestic firms to formalise policy, processes and service rules to comply with the Act,” she said.

Lagging behind

Delhi-based lawyer, Gaurang Kanth noted that multinationals are already implementing the Act, whereas domestic firms are yet to get started.

“I have handled several cases of sexual harassment. In one instance, when the ICC took the case of a Government employee to the Central Administrative Tribunal, which handles such disputes, the Tribunal had no idea whether it can entertain appeals from the ICC or not,” he said.

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