Central government employees will now have e-platform to fight sexual harassment

Tuesday May 09, 2017 , 2 min Read

The central government’s women employees are all set to have an e-platform that will enable them to file complaints of sexual harassment online. The platform could possibly be launched within this month, once the National Information Centre (NIC) establishes it, according to a Press Trust of India report. While addressing heads of the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC), Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi said,

“We have worked vigorously in the last two-three years in this area. We are going to launch an online platform where women can file sexual harassment-related complaints.”

The WCD ministry took this decision last October after a lot of women from various ministries complained to the Minister, according to The Times of India. This measure is meant to ensure that women who face sexual harassment at the workplace feel safe to file a complaint against the culprit. Maneka Gandhi also said,

"We hope our ICCs work in such a way that we won't have the need for using such a platform to seek redressal. Also, we have had an e-box facility for the past year for children to file complaints anonymously. We have received hundreds of cases through that."

According to The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, any workplace with more than 10 workers should have an internal complaints committee to receive complaints of sexual harassment. The Union government has a strength of 30.87 lakh employees, out of which nearly 11 percent are women.