Lay as­ses­sor of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal (EOT) Leela Ramdeen says the time has come for leg­is­la­tion specif­i­cal­ly tack­ling sex­u­al ha­rass­ment to be in­tro­duced.

In an in­ter­view at the EOT's of­fice on Man­ic Street in Ch­agua­nas, Ramdeen said un­til the state amends or cre­ates a law spe­cif­ic to sex­u­al ha­rass­ment out­side of the crim­i­nal act that cov­ers it, no one is pro­tect­ed.

Her com­ments fol­lowed the dis­missal of a claim of dis­crim­i­na­tion in em­ploy­ment on the ba­sis of sex, by way of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and vic­tim­iza­tion dat­ed No­vem­ber 17, 2015, brought by Rishi Per­sad Ma­haraj against Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel. Ma­haraj was em­ployed by Ban­quet and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre Ltd on prop­er­ty owned by Cas­ca­dia at the time of the al­leged in­ci­dents.

Ramdeen said as Ma­haraj is open­ly gay, the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act does not de­fine what sex means, so the Tri­bunal could not in­ter­pret it to in­clude ho­mo­sex­u­als. In her opin­ion, Ma­haraj did not stand a chance with his claims based on that.

In de­liv­er­ing her rul­ing, Madam Jus­tice Don­na Prow­ell-Raphael or­dered Ma­haraj to pay the le­gal costs of Cas­ca­dia.