KARACHI- Federal Ombudsperson for Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplaces Kashmala Tariq said sexual harassment can happen anywhere but it can be effectively dealt if such incidents are reported.
She said while talking to awareness programme on women sexual harassment at workplace as a chief guest at Dow University of Health Sciences on Friday.
“If the reporting is not done, the morale of culprits will be high, we have to relieve people’s fears so that morale of accused is low,” she added.
On this occasion acting vice chancellor Dow University Prof Zarnaz Wahid, Principal Dow Medical College Prof Amjad Siraj Memon and Dr Faryal Sheikh also addressed the participants.
Kashmala said there had been 330 cases reported in 2019 while 272 cases were reported in 2018.
She said there were reports of sexual harassment at workplace with women around the world and the procedure to handling it had been clarified and to handle such cases in Pakistan government made a department by the name of FOSPAH, which aim to provide support for such cases.
Further she told the students, if any incident of any kind occurs during viva, theory, practical or exam, it should be reported immediately. She said to handle such cases there should be a committee in every university, harassment committee working in Dow University of Health Sciences, further she said if you do not have faith in committee or the committee not working on your complain, they should lodge a complaint with us, these complaints can be filled by online and we provide legal assistance by contacting them by call within three minutes.
“The tragedy of our country is that there are laws but people don’t know. People affected by sexual harassment are afraid to knocking on the low, sexual harassment my occur at school, college, university, hospital or any office place,” she added.
Kashmala informed we had many universities cases reported, most of the cases between teacher and student, upon which we impose the sentence of suspension or dismissal of job on teacher.
On this occasion acting vice chancellor of Dow University of Health Sciences Prof Zarnaz Wahid said this awareness session provide significant information to our students for throughout life, while Dow University has a policy of intolerance on sexual harassment complaints, if such case reported, we will take action immediately.
On this occasion, Principal of Dow Medical College Prof Amjad Siraj Memon said, it was good to open FOSPAH office in Karachi to address such cases, Dow University installed CCTV cameras throughout the university to prevent such incidents and keeping eye on each students as well as teacher, despite this system, we have constituted a harassment committee, which is playing its vital role in university, we are ready to handle any complaint, for this purpose letters have been sent to every office, if such case has been reported, the University has zero tolerance on it.
