A hot­line will be set up for peo­ple who want to re­port sex­u­al ha­rass­ment on the job as well as to re­ceive com­plaints from mi­grants and do­mes­tic work­ers.

This is one of the ini­tia­tives the Labour Min­istry has pro­posed a pol­i­cy to curb sex­u­al ha­rass­ment at the work­place.

Labour Min­istry Chief Labour Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Sabi­na Gomez de­tailed as­pects of the pol­i­cy yes­ter­day when Min­istry of­fi­cials and oth­er stake­hold­ers ap­peared be­fore a Par­lia­men­tary Over­sight com­mit­tee (Hu­man Rights, Equal­i­ty, Di­ver­si­ty) on the mat­ter.

The fo­cus was on how work­ers are and will be fur­ther pro­tect­ed. How­ev­er, a call al­so came from Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion chair­per­son Lynette See­baran-Suite for any pol­i­cy to deal with non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments where em­ploy­ers pay-off vic­tims who are forced to keep silent.

Gomez said the Min­istry's pro­posed a hot­line for peo­ple to re­port sex­u­al ha­rass­ment. Via this, the Min­istry will al­so be able to mon­i­tor/fol­low up on callers' is­sues, track how is­sues are ad­dressed and if callers are pleased with the ac­tion tak­en.

On con­cerns from Fo­lade Mu­to­ta (Women's In­sti­tute for Al­ter­na­tive De­vel­op­ment) about com­plaints from do­mes­tic and mi­grant work­ers, Gomez as­sured the pol­i­cy cov­ers house­hold work­ers and the Min­istry col­lab­o­rates close­ly with the Na­tion­al Union of Do­mes­tic Work­ers (NUDE).

Mu­to­ta al­so called for the Min­istry's pol­i­cy to en­sure gay and ef­fem­i­nate men are pro­tect­ed from sex­u­al ha­rass­ment. Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO) di­rec­tor Col­in Robin­son who was among ob­servers yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia his or­gan­i­sa­tion has re­ceived re­ports of such men be­ing sub­ject­ed to ha­rass­ment in the work­place in­clud­ing be­cause of their sex­i­ual ori­en­ta­tion.

Gomez said the Min­istry li­ais­es with Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty on mi­grant work­ers. She said once mi­grants are em­ployed, whether they are in T&T legal­ly or il­le­gal­ly, they are en­ti­tled to pro­tec­tion.

Gomez said work­ers cur­rent­ly don't need a union to rep­re­sent them and could ap­proach the Min­istry. They are ad­vised to write the em­ploy­er about the is­sue and the Min­istry would fol­low up. She not­ed a case where a work­er was ha­rassed by a col­league and the res­i­dent union rep­re­sent­ed the ha­rass­er - plus the vic­tim was tar­get­ted by col­leagues who ob­ject­ed to her re­port­ing the mat­ter.

Min­istry le­gal of­fi­cer Sangee­ta Bon­doo said the pol­i­cy will ap­ply to all work­ers- not just com­pa­nies with five or more em­ploy­ees. It's now at the draft­ing stage. She couldn't give a time­line for com­ple­tion but said it is a top pri­or­i­ty. Boon­doo said en­force­ment con­di­tions will be in­clud­ed with re­quire­ments for em­ploy­ers.

She said changes have been not­ed on how courts are han­dling such mat­ters and "peo­ple are find­ing a voice."

The Min­istry re­ceived re­ports of 16 cas­es of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the past 10 years.

Wom­antra's Stephanie Leitch said this speaks to the grav­i­ty of the prob­lem "as we know women are be­ing abused on a reg­u­lar ba­sis."

EOC's See­baran-Suite said 20 per cent of EOC's com­plaints in­volved sex dis­crim­i­na­tion is­sues in­clud­ing five sex­u­al ha­rass­ment mat­ters. She said em­ploy­ers face a $1,000 a day fine for fail­ing to sup­ply EOC in­for­ma­tion.

She ex­pressed con­cern about sit­u­a­tions where a man­ag­er - for ex­am­ple- may be seen to be of more val­ue than an em­ploy­ee vic­tim who may be lat­er "man­aged out" of the job via warn­ing let­ters. One rem­e­dy has been the pub­lic per­cep­tion of a per­son be­ing forced out and sub­se­quent pub­lic threats to stop buy­ing the prod­uct, she not­ed.

"So one thing we must ex­am­ine is how we walk the com­plainant through the process. There's al­so the big is­sue of non-dis­clo­sure agree­ments where em­ploy­ers have pools of mon­ey to pay off women who have been ha­rassed. Women are forced to keep silent, the ha­rass­er con­tin­ues to ha­rass and the women dis­ap­pear. It's a ques­tion of how do you get em­ploy­ers to erad­i­cate this mis­chief?"

See­baran- Suite added EOC is work­ing with Gov­ern­ment on amend­ments to the EOC Act to­wards reme­dies con­cern­ing the work­place.

T&T In­sti­tute for Women in Lead­er­ship's Hazel Brown said there was lit­tle in the pol­i­cy for trade unions' role.

"It's sig­nif­i­cant that among us to­day, there are no trade unions," she said.

JSC mem­ber Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye not­ed in the well-known Re­pub­lic Bank case, the ac­cused was union-rep­re­sent­ed, "So I don't know what com­fort unions can give."

Thomp­son-Ahye rec­om­mend­ed the Min­istry in­cor­po­rate the me­dia to share in­for­ma­tion and seek the as­sis­tance of women on tele­vi­sion for this.

Em­ploy­ers' Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion CEO Stephanie Fin­gal called for all par­ties to share syn­er­gies on the pol­i­cy since she said there are chal­lenges in lit­er­a­cy and em­ploy­ers in un­der­stand­ing the is­sues.