Following complaints of repeated sexual harassment of female staff at the Department of Public Information (DPI), the agency yesterday terminated the services of one of its senior Information Technology employees.
Sources told Stabroek News that the female had complained repeatedly of her senior’s sexual aggression towards her with last week being the culmination of her frustrations.
The female said that the man would touch her inappropriately despite attempts to stop and last week squeezed her buttocks and made a joke of it.
This newspaper contacted management of the government information agency which would only confirm the termination and said that there was an ongoing investigation.
Under the 1997 Prevention of Discrimination Act, sexual harassment is defined as unwanted conduct of a sexual nature in the workplace or in connection with the performance of work which is threatened or imposed as a condition of employment on an employee or which creates a hostile working environment for the employee.
“Any act of sexual harassment against an employee committed by an employer, managerial employee or coworker shall constitute unlawful discrimination based on sex within the meaning of section 4 of this Act,” it states.
According to an International Labour Organization (ILO) Fact Sheet on sexual harassment, it may take two forms: 1) Quid Pro Quo, when a job benefit – such as a pay rise, a promotion, or even continued employment – is made conditional on the victim acceding to demands to engage in some form of sexual behaviour; or, 2) a hostile working environment, in which the conduct creates conditions that are intimidating or humiliating for the victim.
It further notes that behaviour that qualifies as sexual harassment can be physical, such as physical violence, touching, unnecessary close proximity; verbal, such as comments and questions about appearance, lifestyle, and sexual orientation; and non-verbal, such as whistling, sexually-suggestive gestures, and the display of sexual materials.
Activist Karen de Souza, head of Red Thread, which works for the protection of women, believes that sexual harassment continues to be one of the more difficult sexual offences to confront, partly because so few cases are reported anywhere. Women organisations here have said that there is no doubt that sexual harassment is prevalent in workplaces but because it is not taken seriously by many organisations, the victims are often re-victimised and they suffer in silence.
Women’s rights activist Danuta Radzik last year told this newspaper that to really address the problems, all workplaces, whether public or private, should implement policies that clearly set out the steps to be taken when this occurs.
“All public and private sectors organisations, inclusive of the ministries, businesses, including the whole range of them like mining and forestry, they should all have sexual harassment policies in the workplace,” Radzik told this newspaper last year.
She believes such a move will not be difficult as there are many resources online which can be used but first and foremost the policy must clearly define sexual harassment and then outline the steps to be taken by employees as it relates to lodging a complaint of sexual harassment.
