NEW DELHI: Women constitute almost half of the segment of our society and must be given due weightage and honoured and treated with dignity at places where they work to earn their livelihood, said the Delhi High Court on Wednesday. The court was hearing a plea by a woman for being included in a panel for guest teachers. The government was directed to include her and avail her services when required by any school here, subject to her medical fitness.
The High Court said employers must be considerate and sympathetic towards a pregnant employee. The high court said the employer must realise the physical difficulties that a woman would face in performing her duties at the workplace while carrying a baby in her womb or looking after the child after birth.
“To become a mother is the most natural phenomena in the life of a woman,” Justice Suresh Kait said.
“Whatever is needed to facilitate the birth of child to a woman who is in service, the employer has to be considerate and sympathetic towards her and must realise the physical difficulties which a working woman would face in performing her duties at the workplace while carrying a baby in the womb or while looking after the child after birth,” the court added. The court directed the office of Deputy Directorate of Education of the Delhi government to issue necessary order to this effect within two weeks.
The court allowed the woman’s plea to quash the government’s order, which had stated that her candidature may be considered for the post of Guest Teacher PGT (Hindi) in future, subject to availability of the vacancy and production of medical fitness certificate from the competent authority.
The woman had said the department had advertised a notice in May 2017 for ‘Drawing a Panel for Guest Teachers for Empanelment in Delhi Government Schools for the Academic Year 2017-18’.
She had said in her plea that later the department took out another notice in September 2017 calling selected guest teachers for verification of their documents and later, the woman got selected and got her credentials verified.
On January 28 this year, she gave birth to a child through caesarean and two days later, the authorities asked the selected candidates to appear at their office between February 1 to 3 for further verification of documents. The woman said she went to the office on February 3 for final verification of her documents but the officials “behaved differently and even harassed her by not marking her attendance”.
(With agency inputs)