Chandigarh: “Our seniors demand chocolates or pizza if some work has to be done by them, which sometimes leads to sexual harassment. Toilets for women have dirty pictures sketched by unscrupulous elements.”
These are some of the issues raised by the staff members of the PGI during an awareness lecture on sexual harassment at workplace at the Advanced Paediatric Centre (APC) here on Tuesday. There was no office of the sexual harassment committee and the staff was not much aware about who to approach and where to go, an official at the premier medical institute said.
Demanding a safe environment for women at the workplace, Dr Upneet Lalli, Deputy Director, Institute of Correctional Administration, Sector 26, the key speaker at the workshop, asked the PGI to display boards about the sexual harassment committee at prominent places on the campus. If it was not done, the institute could invite a fine for it, Dr Upneet said.
“There is a need to include more members from outside the PGI in the sexual harassment panel so that in cases where the committee chairman is junior to the one who has been the accused, the other members can take a stand,” she said.
Dr Upneet said sexual harassment at workplace could include physical contact or advances, a demand or request for sexual favours, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography or any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of sexual nature. She said the committee had to complete a probe in sexual harassment cases within three months.
Reacting to the recent #MeToo movement, she said it was good that people came forward through the online medium, but action can only be taken against the accused, if the case is reported to the police or authorities concerned. Otherwise, it would stay only online.
The lecture was organised in view of several sexual harassment cases reported on the campus recently. The PGI’s sexual harassment committee submitted its report in a case, which allegedly involved Sahib Singh, private secretary to Dr T Shyam K Singh, head of the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery (CTVS) Department, to PGI Director Dr Jagat Ram.
In another case, a researcher had accused Prof Vikas Gautam from the Department of Microbiology of sexual harassment. After filing a complaint, she had resigned from her project work being done under him. The internal committee, headed by Prof Savita Kumari, had earlier submitted its report to the Director in this case too. The matter was then discussed at the governing body meeting of the institute.
Prior to this, a woman working on contractual basis had accused a clerk in the medical education cell of sexual harassment. A complaint was also lodged with the police. Later, both the parties had reached a compromise.
