KARACHI, March 8: The Sindh government has got about 30 inquiry committees installed at various public settings over the past couple of months to protect women against harassment at workplace, it emerged on Friday.

The federal government had made legal provisions for the protection of women against harassment, including sexual advances, sexually demeaning attitudes, causing interference with work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment, at workplace in March 2010.

The Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2010, required government departments, corporations, autonomous and semi-autonomous bodies as well as private institutions employing services of women to form an inquiry committee comprising one chairperson and two members, at least one of them to be a female, for hearing complaints against harassment.

While the Sindh women development department had been able to ensure display of a code of conduct at workplaces, provision of guidelines for behaviour of employees, management and owners of an organisation, to ensure a work environment free of harassment and intimidation, the inquiry was not constituted on a fast track basis for some technical reasons or coordination problems, said a source in the department.

Things gathered pace after the appointment of a new ombudsman under the law, an official said, adding that over 30 inquiry committees currently existed in different institutions across the province.

Secretary at the ombudsman office Rana Zaki Shamsi said that since the secretariat establishment in October 2012, besides awareness drives, correspondence was made with various departments and officials, asking them to establish inquiry committees. “We’ve written 100 letters and received 42 replies so far, yet it is encouraging that some of the people responded,” she said.