BHUBANESWAR: Salaries of employees of colleges that fail to set up internal complaints committees (ICCs) under Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, 2013 or the POSH Act, will be withheld.
Deputy chief minister Pravati Parida told mediapersons on Thursday, “The institutions have been provided a month’s time to establish ICCs. Those who file false cases of sexual harassment will also face disciplinary action following inquiry.”
“Our campaign on prevention of sexual harassment had started from the Lok Seva Bhawan and will now to rolled out in every institution at the block level,” Parida added.
Last week, the Cuttack administration had threatened to withhold salaries of employees of close to 100 higher educational institutions (HEIs) in the district after they failed to submit compliance on POSH Act as directed by the Higher Education department, following the FM College incident on July 12.
The department has now asked all colleges and teacher education institutions to upload details of their ICCs on ‘Sexual Harassment Electronic Box’ or the SHe-Box portal of the Women and Child Development Ministry, by August 1. For this purpose, regional directors of education (RDEs) have been appointed as nodal officers in five RDE zones.
Every higher educational institution is required to form an ICC in compliance with the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, 2013. The directive issued by the department on Wednesday requires institutions to provide comprehensive data on complaints received, their resolutions, and the composition of ICCs at both departmental and institutional levels.
Meanwhile, department officials informed that almost 80 per cent of the higher educational institutions have formed ICCs following its directive of July 13. The FM College at Balasore, where a student had set herself afire after allegedly being sexually harassed by her HoD, had no ICC in place when the girl first registered her complaint against the professor on June 30.