WCD Ministry empanels 223 Institutes to conduct awareness programmes on Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act

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To ensure security of women at all workplaces, the Ministry of Women and Child Development has empanelled institutions/organisations to conduct awareness exercises on the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. As of November, 2018, as many as 223 institutes/organisations have been empanelled from across the country to impart training in local languages. “These empanelled institutes have to submit quarterly reports through SHe-Box, an online complaints portal, of all the training programmes/workshop conducted by them under the SH Act. The empanelled institutes/organisations/companies have so far organized over 700 capacity building exercises which were attended by nearly 50,000 participants,” said WCD Minister Smt. Maneka Sanjay Gandhi.

 

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013 mandates all the workplace which include any department, organisation, undertaking, establishment, enterprise, institution, office, branch or unit which is established, owned, controlled or wholly or substantially financed by funds provided directly or indirectly by the appropriate Government, local authority, corporation or a co-operative society with more than 10 workers to constitute an Internal Complaint Committee (ICC) to receive complaints of sexual harassment.

Complaints can be registered on SHe-Box, an effort of the government to provide a single window access to every woman, irrespective of her work status, whether working in organised or unorganised, private or public sector, to facilitate the registration of complaint related to sexual harassment. Any woman facing sexual harassment at workplace can register her complaint through this portal. Once a complaint is submitted to ‘SHe-Box’ http://shebox.nic.in/, it will be directly sent to the authority concerned having jurisdiction to take action in the matter.

            A Handbook and Training Module on the SH Act has also been published by the Ministry to provide information about the provisions of the Act in an easy-to-use practical manner. (Available here: http://www.wcd.nic.in/act/2314 ) The private organizations are encouraged to customize the Training Module as per their extant service rules and disciplinary procedures prescribed therein.