Quarterly meeting of LAPH held in Lower Chitral
CHITRAL: In the quarterly meeting of Lower Chitral’s district monitoring committee on gender-based violence (GBV), rigorously streamlining and regulating of the privately managed hostels for girls was termed as inevitable to contain the harassment cases against women.
Convened by Legal Awareness Program for Human Rights (LAPH), a Chitral-based organization, the committee members discussed some of the potential issues leading to GBV and devised ways and means to solve them in their earlier stages.
The senior officers of district administration, police and other line departments and the representatives of different civil society organizations attended the meeting with assistant commissioner Chitral Dr. Atif Jalib in the chair.
Taking cognizance of the issues emanating from the private hostels of girls students in the city, Dr. Jalib said that security audit of all the hostels will be carried out in due course of time to ensure that the inmates are safe from all kinds of threats especially cyber-based harassments.
Earlier, the participants pointed out the mushroom growth of the private hostels for girls and pointed out towards the inadequate security system therein which exposed them to the threats as the standard operating procedures were neglected by the owners for extorting maximum financial benefits.
They also called attention to protection of women against harassment in the working places and said that with the generalization of education, more and more number of women were joining the government, semi-government and private sector organizations as its employees who are in need of proper security.
Expressing their apprehensions, they said that as per the KP’s 2010 Act for Protection against harassment of women at the workplaces, each body both in the public and private sector was bound to constitute an inquiry committee but hardly any organization has notified this committee.
They also expressed their concerns over the denial of the employment by different government departments to women in the district and said that the government had fixed at least 5 percent quota but in many organization, there was not a single woman employee.
Program manager of LAPH, Qazi Irfan told the meeting that his organization was compiling a directory for referral pathway for the victims of GBV for their consolation and support in their hours of distress.
Those who attended the session included DSP (legal) Sher Muhsinul Mulk, child protection officer Assadullah, Darul Aman manager Asia Ajmal, representative of degree college Prof Shafiq Ahmed, gender officer of AKRSP Shazia Sultan, legal advisor Altaf Gohar advocate, human rights activist Niaz A Niazi advocate and others.
