The number of complaints over sexual harassment of women at workplaces is very few due to various reasons including their conservative mentality and fear of losing job, speakers said at a discussion in the city on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Labour along with the cooperation of private sector has formed 6314 committee across the country to prevent sexual harassment at workplaces but victims usually don’t lodge complaints, they said.
Though the actual number of workplace harassments is large, the culprits could not brought under punishment for not filing complaints by the victims, the speakers said based on a document presented at the discussion.
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The speakers said these taking part in a discussion on “Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace and Educational Institutions, the necessity of enacting a law to prevent gender-based violence and ratification of International Labour Organization (ILO) Covention-190’ organised by Bangladesh Labour Foundation (BLF) at the CIRDAP auditorium in the capital on Tuesday.
Mina Masud Uzzaman, additional inspector general, Department of inspection factories and establishment (DIFE), attended in the programme as the chief guest while BLS secretary ZM Kamrul Anam presided over the function.
AKM Ashraful Uddin, executive director of BLF, presented a keynote paper on the topic at the programme.
Mina Masud said 6314 committees were formed across the country of which more than 3000 committees in the apparel sector, but the number of complaints to the committee is very thin so far.
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Citing the information of 830 rape cases from the January-October period this year reported by different newspapers Masud said a large portion of incidents have not been reported so far.
The speakers also stressed on enacting strict law to punish the criminals for sexual harassment at workplaces and educational institutions in line with the ILO convention for ensuring sound workplace for women.
A number of educationists, social workers, labor rights organizers, NGO activists, and journalists participated in the discussion.