Tweets, jokes, stalking, gossiping now comes under workplace harassment

The members of the National Assembly have approved changes to Pakistan’s workplace harassment law to widen the meaning of harassment, who is considered an employee and who can lodge a complaint.

The amendments were made in paragraphs e, f and h of Section 2 of the Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, 2010.

The law applies to the extent of the Islamabad Capital Territory.

Tweets, jokes, gossiping can now constitute harassment

Parliament approved amendments or changes to the definition of harassment so it is no longer limited to just sexual harassment. It can now include “any unwanted behaviour which creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment on the basis of age, disability, gender, religion or belief and race or sexual orientation.”

This is considered unwanted behaviour:
Spoken or written words
Comments
Jokes
Abuse
Physical gestures
Facial expressions
Offensive emails
Tweets
Comments on social networking sites
Gazing
Gossiping
Images
Videos
Drawing
Graffiti

The law now defines sexual harassment means “any unwanted and unwelcome sexual advance, requests for sexual favours or other verbal or written communication or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”

Sexually coloured remarks or forcibly showing or discussing pornography with a person is now also legally called sexual harassment.

Voyeurism and stalking will now also be considered sexual harassment at a workplace if it interferes with work performance. Trying to punish a complainant for refusing to comply with such requests is also punishable under the law.

Transgender persons can now be complainants

Paragraph (e) of the act (which deals with the definition) has been amended to say that, a “Complainant means a person who has made a complaint to the Ombudsman or to the Inquiry Committee on being aggrieved by an act of harassment”.

Earlier, the definition restricted the complainant to a woman or a man.

The change “seeks to widen scope and to include transgender persons, so that the law may apply indiscriminately to all citizens employed,” read the draft of the bill.

Third-party contract employees

Paragraph (f) of Section 2 of the act has been amended to include a person hired through an agent in the definition of an employee. The amendment says that the employee may be hired with or without the knowledge of the principle employer and the terms of the employment may be “express or implied”.

The law now identifies a co-worker as an employer. This will have an impact on the cases in which complaints are dismissed based on the technical ground that there’s no employee-employer relationship as happened in the Meesha Shafi-Ali Zafar case.

The Punjab ombudsperson (Protection against Harassment of Women at Workplace) had rejected Meesha Shafi’s complaint against Ali Zafar on the technical ground that they don’t share employee-employer status.

The actor had to go to the Supreme Court to have her appeal approved.