Moves to for­malise a sex­u­al ha­rass­ment pol­i­cy through the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) in light of for­mer sport and youth af­fairs min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith's is­sue has been de­scribed by se­nior coun­sel Avory Sinanan as a "knee-jerk re­ac­tion", but long in com­ing.

At a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said he was push­ing to for­malise a sex­u­al ha­rass­ment pub­lic pol­i­cy through the PSC in light of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment al­le­ga­tions levied against Smith by Car­rie-Ann More­au who worked at the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs.

The AG's move came hours af­ter head of watch­dog group Fix­in T&T Kirk Wait­he called for the ef­fec­tive im­ple­men­ta­tion of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment leg­is­la­tion by the Gov­ern­ment.

A ma­jor find­ing of the re­port of a com­mit­tee set up by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the dis­missal and pay­ment of $150,000 to More­au af­ter she al­leged that she was sex­u­al­ly ha­rassed by Smith showed a cov­er-up.

That re­port which Row­ley de­scribed as un­us­able has since been dumped.

Al-Rawi said he was at the cusp of invit­ing a suit­able per­son—a re­tired judge or se­nior coun­sel that has ex­per­tise to con­sid­er the very nar­row is­sue of the al­le­ga­tion of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment.

Weigh­ing in on the AG's an­nounce­ment, Sinanan said on Sat­ur­day that the move was a wel­comed one.

"I am glad to see that the AG is proac­tive in that re­spect. It's a step in the right di­rec­tion."

Sinanan said while the de­ci­sion may have tak­en longer than ex­pect­ed, it was bet­ter late than nev­er.

"It might be a knee-jerk re­ac­tion, but the point about it is that the his­to­ry of our pol­i­tics has al­ways been a knee-jerk re­ac­tion...af­ter the fact. We are re­ac­tive rather than proac­tive."

Sinanan said while sex­u­al ha­rass­ment has been in the pub­lic do­main for years, he hopes the mat­ter gets on our statute books soon.

Wom­antra speaks out

Di­rec­tor of women's rights group Wom­antra, Stephanie Leitch said women's con­fi­dence in the mech­a­nisms that cur­rent­ly ex­ist for the re­port­ing and ac­tion­ing of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment com­plaints are al­ready low and while the de­tails of the Smith case are un­set­tling "it like­ly does not come as a sur­prise for most work­ing women."

She said pow­er­ful men con­tin­ue to be pro­tect­ed at the ex­pense of women work­ers "and, so yes, it does not au­gur well for women's con­fi­dence that a for­mer min­is­ter and hold­er of pub­lic of­fice was not held ac­count­able for such se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al im­pro­pri­ety."

Leitch said the fact that More­au was made to sign a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment when she first at­tempt­ed to bring the mat­ter be­fore the In­dus­tri­al Court speaks of the de­sire to keep the sit­u­a­tion un­der wraps.

She said the pub­lic per­cep­tion has al­ready been shaped by the events and a be­lief that Smith would not be held ac­count­able for his ac­tions.

Leitch said in Feb­ru­ary of this year, the Min­istry of Labour launched their Na­tion­al Work­place Pol­i­cy on Sex­u­al Ha­rass­ment which sig­nalled the mat­ter as a pri­or­i­ty.

"While the min­istry has pro­vid­ed a use­ful frame­work, it is still large­ly up to com­pa­nies to be­come com­pli­ant," Leitch said.

She said through this pol­i­cy and the in­tro­duc­tion of en­force­able leg­is­la­tion, the Gov­ern­ment can send a strong mes­sage that sex­u­al ha­rass­ment will not be tol­er­at­ed "and is no longer a price women have to pay in or­der to earn a liv­ing."

The pol­i­cy, launched in Feb­ru­ary, is de­signed to pre­vent, pro­hib­it and ad­dress sex­u­al ha­rass­ment at all lev­els in the work­place.

Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment is any phys­i­cal, ver­bal or non-ver­bal con­duct of a sex­u­al na­ture and oth­er con­duct af­fect­ing the dig­ni­ty of women and men, which is un­wel­come, un­rea­son­able and of­fen­sive to the re­cip­i­ent and has ad­verse af­fects on the work­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

The is­sue in T&T lacks de­f­i­n­i­tions or spe­cif­ic in­di­ca­tors

The min­istry stat­ed that cur­rent­ly, the law is silent on the is­sue in T&T which lacks de­f­i­n­i­tions or spe­cif­ic in­di­ca­tors to de­ter­mine what type of be­hav­iour con­sti­tutes sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place.

T&T is a mem­ber state of the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) which up­holds labour and hu­man rights laws.

This si­lence un­der­mines ef­forts to pre­vent and treat with sex­u­al ha­rass­ment mat­ters.

In prov­ing clar­i­ty to an unclar­i­fied is­sue, the Gov­ern­ment's goal is to take a ze­ro-tol­er­ance stance on any mat­ter.

The web­site stat­ed that from 2013 to 2018 the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion re­ceived eight com­plaints of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment. 2017 record­ed the high­est num­ber, with three com­plaints. There were no re­ports in 2014.

It al­so stat­ed that from 2008 to 2018 there were 16 trade dis­putes in­volv­ing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment.

Sta­tis­tics showed 2016 to 2018 ac­count­ed for 11 trade dis­putes—68.75 per cent aris­ing out of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment claims re­port­ed and a 37.5 per cent in­crease in such re­ports since 2015.

Such an in­crease may be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed since sex­u­al ha­rass­ment mat­ters have been dis­guised as re­ports of dis­missal, ter­mi­na­tions and oth­er work­place breach­es.

"These find­ings high­light the ur­gency for im­prov­ing ex­ist­ing ser­vices and cre­at­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate pol­i­cy that ef­fec­tive­ly pro­hibits sex­u­al ha­rass­ment," the min­istry stat­ed.

The min­istry stat­ed that the 2017 Na­tion­al Women’s Health Sur­vey for T&T, com­mis­sioned by Caribbean DE­VTrends and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank iden­ti­fied that 13 per cent of women ex­pe­ri­enced sex­u­al ha­rass­ment at work, on the job, in pub­lic trans­port and pub­lic spaces, with the high­est preva­lence of this type of ha­rass­ment be­ing in the form of elec­tron­ic mes­sages with sex­u­al con­tent (eight per cent) and be­ing groped in a pub­lic space (sev­en per cent).

The sur­vey al­so sug­gest­ed, that in cer­tain in­stances, as many as 84 per cent of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment ex­pe­ri­ences were un­re­port­ed.

From 1995, the In­dus­tri­al Court of T&T has ad­ju­di­cat­ed in mat­ters in­volv­ing sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and ap­plied case law and oth­er leg­is­la­tion to these mat­ters to of­fer re­dress to a per­son so vic­timised.

Women most vul­ner­a­ble to sex­u­al ha­rass­ment are young, fi­nan­cial­ly de­pen­dent, sin­gle or di­vorced and those with a mi­grant sta­tus.