WCD Minister Smt Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
today launched a comprehensive SHe-Box online complaint management System for women working in
both public and private organizations to lodge complaints of Sexual Harassment
at workplace. The SHe-Box was launched in New Delhi today to
ensure the effective implementation of the Sexual
Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act
(the SH Act), 2013.
The new SHe-Box
portal offers the facility of making online complaints of sexual harassment at
workplace to all women employees in the country including government and
private employees. Those who have already filed a
written complaint with the concerned Internal Complaint Committee (ICC) or
Local Complaint Committee (LCC) constituted under the SH Act are also eligible
to file their complaint through this portal.
Launching the online facility, the WCD
Minister, Smt Maneka Sanjay Gandhi said that this is a historic step since it
is probably the First Ever time that the government of any country has launched
an online portal to receive complaints of sexual harassment at workplace. The
government is completely committed to provide a safe and fair environment to
working women. It is for this reason that the WCD Ministry has made efforts to
make the setting up of Internal
Complaint Committees mandatory
at all workplaces, the Minister explained. She said that the WCD Ministry has
also produced a manual and has organized training programmes for Internal Complaint Committees and in the next significant step, the SHe-Box
has been launched to provide platform to aggrieved women to make their
complaints directly so that suitable action is taken to redress their
grievances. These complaints will be monitored by the WCD Ministry, Smt Maneka
Gandhi assured.
SHe-Box portal is an
effort to provide speedier remedy to women facing sexual harassment at
workplace. Once a complaint is submitted to the portal, it will be directly
sent to the ICC/LCC of the concerned employer. Through this portal, WCD as well
as complainant can monitor the progress of inquiry conducted by the ICC/LCC. This
is a proactive step taken by MWCD in the wake of the Worldwide social media
campaign #MeToo, where women have related their
experience of facing sexual harassment and abuse. The portal can be accessed at
the link given below:
Link to the SHe-Box
portal: http://shebox.nic.in/
Users of SHe-Box also have the option of interacting with Ministry of WCD
through this portal, with an assured time-bound response. The portal also
provides information on 112 institutions empaneled by MWCD to conduct
training/workshops on the issue of sexual harassment at the workplace. It also
has the option for resource persons and institutions willing to contribute to
training on this subject in various organisations to submit their applications.
SHe-Box will provide a
platform to these empanelled institutes/organisations to share their capacity
building activities with the Ministry which in turn will be able to monitor the
activities of these institutes/organizations so empanelled from across the
country.
The Ministry has published a Handbook and Training Module on
the SH Act to provide information about the provisions of the Act in easy to
use practical manner. The private organizations are encouraged to customize the
Training Module as per their extant service rules and disciplinary procedures
prescribed therein.
Ensuring the dignity
and safety of women must be first priority for any digital society. Towards
realisation of the vision of the Digital
India programme, the Ministry is promoting utilisation of
information and communication technology to achieve the goal of gender equality
and Women Empowerment. It is an effort to utilise the digital space to enable
speedier response to the complaints of women against sexual harassment at
workplace.
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