Sexual harassment panel of Chandigarh Police met only 5 times in 2 years

Indian Express: Chandigarh: Monday, December 28, 2015.

THE UT Police seems to be little concerned about its female staff. The sexual harassment committee which is bound to hold monthly meetings to know the problems of the female staff met only five times in a span of two years. Many of the female staff members did not attend these meetings.

According to the information sought under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, an Internal Complaints Committee was constituted on December 24, 2013, comprising six members: DSP Kamla Meena, Inspector Harjeet Kaur, Sub-Inspector Sarita Roy, Assistant Sub-Inspector Chander Mukhi, social worker Madhu P Singh and councillor Heera Negi. S-I Saripa Roy was with the United Nations Organisation when her name was included in the committee.

The RTI information revealed that no nodal officer was appointed by the higher authorities to take a call on the recommendations of the committee. It also came to light that no facility or grant was issued to the committee to hold awareness programmes for the female staff and no circular was issued to the divisions concerned to implement the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplaces Act.

Under the provisions of the law, the authorities concerned should display the names of the committee members, their mobile numbers and definition of the Sexual Harassment Act at the police stations, but no such information is displayed at the police stations.

Only five meetings of the committee were held; out of these, four were held in 2014 and only one was held this year. The four meetings which were held in 2014, only DSP Kamla Meena was present in all the meetings.

According to a constable who sought the information under the RTI, there are 248 female constables in the UT Police and they all needed to be sensitised but around 100 of all these constables who were recruited before the constitution of the committee did not attend the meeting.

When contacted, Chandigarh Police SSP Sukchain Singh Gill said there was a committee under a DSP-rank official and it was looking into the problems being faced by the constables.