THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A week after the release of the Justice Hema Committee report which pointed to gross violations in the Malayalam film industry, the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) and the Althea Women’s Collective have stressed the need to look into other aspects of abuse apart from sexual exploitation as mentioned in the report. While talking to Express Dialogues, WCC member Beena Paul spoke about the need to raise labour violations and exploitation apart from incidents of sexual violence in the movie industry.
As a first step, the Althea Women’s Collective has published a draft petition to be submitted to the Labour department. Althea demanded that the cinema industry should be re-emphasized as a sector that is profit-oriented and labour-utilising.
“The Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH) at Workplace Act of 2013 should be implemented in the shooting set for both women and trans-women equally. Equal wages must be granted for equal work and also 30 % of the work opportunities, except in acting roles, must be reserved for women. The labour department must set up a website from which women workers could obtain information about job opportunities. A work experience certificate must be granted to all those workers who worked on a project at any level,” the draft said.
“A seminar will be organised at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) on the draft petition by ensuring the participation of all stakeholders,” convenor of Althea, P E Usha, told TNIE. “There is no minimum wage system and equal pay existing in the Malayalam film industry. The Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) also did not function. There should be an intervention at the governmental level to address these issues,” she said.
However, Labour Minister V Sivankutty said that the artists do not come under the purview of the labour laws. “The technicians are included. However, we could not intervene in the wage issue of artists as they do not come under the Employees Compensation Act and Minimum Wages Act. The only thing the government could do is to issue notice considering the welfare of labourers,” he said.
The CITU, the trade union arm of the CPM, is yet to demand an intervention based on labour laws. However, AITUC of the CPI has asked for equal wages for equal jobs. There is criticism against women’s organisations, including the All India Democratic Women’s Association, for being silent on the violation of labour laws in the sector.