Develop sexual harassment policies — CHRAJ
The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has asked all institutions and companies to develop sexual harassment policies in order to ensure conducive environment at work places.
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It said they should also take time to educate their staff on the details of the sexual harassment policy in order to take full advantage of them.
A Deputy Commissioner of CHRAJ, Mercy Larbi, who gave the advice in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said the sexual harassment policies to be developed should be part of the materials the institutions and organisations would give out when they employed people.
Lamenting the fact that sexual harassment had been a challenge in the country, especially in work places, she said it was unfortunate that this policy was not taken seriously, adding that in some countries, people could lose their jobs just because of a sexual harassment complaint made against them.
“Even when you are looking for jobs in this country, some demand sex for jobs. We should take sexual harassment policy seriously in Ghana,” she stressed.
CHRAJ Project
Ms Larbi said it was to help to stop the practice that CHRAJ had started a project with the objective to educate students in basic schools, particularly girls, to know their rights as far as sexual harassment was concerned.
She explained that CHRAJ had heard of incidents where some teachers in basic schools had been harassing and defiling girls; it was believed that by educating girls, as part of the project, they would be able to protect themselves from such teachers when they were confronted with such situations.
She said aside from the students, they must also educate staff members, including teaching staff to know that although the students were children, they had rights.
Ms Larbi asked both students and employees that were being harassed sexually in schools and work places to report the case to any CHRAJ office, adding that the commission had often been receiving such complaints.
