Advocacy Efforts

Following his commitment at the consultation on the 10th of September, the Dy Chief Minister called a meeting on 17th Septemberof all District Magistrates/ Deputy Commissioners from the 11 districts of Delhi and officials from department of women and child development. In the meeting he took stock of the situation from the officers present and instructed them not just to comply with the law but also make the districts safe workplaces, in the true spirit of the law.

The discussion at the meeting centred on:

• Formation of Local Committee in the all those districts of Delhi, where they are still not formed.
• Office space should be given to the committees in the district headquarter.
• One nodal officer should be designated in the district headquarter to take complaints coming directly to the district authority.
• Proper information to be displayed at the district headquarter to support the workers who are coming to file a complaint
• All district magistrates will make it pre requisite to have an internal committee on prevention of sexual harassment for all government tenders/contracts.
• The state will launch an awareness campaign where they will make use of radio, newspaper advertisements, cinema halls, etc. The Minister asked the PRIA- MFF team for support in designing the creative content for this campaign.
• The Minister also ordered that by 30th November 2018, all formal institutions and organisations will be mandated to send in their annual report to the District Office, failing which punitive action will be taken by the state government.

After the meetings in the Delhi Secretariat post the State Consultation, we are now working closely with the Department of Women and Child Development of the Delhi Government for the state’s compliance on implementation of the SHW Act. The project has prepared standard operating procedures based on the Act for all the Local Committees in the 11 districts. These advocacy efforts and learning from our experiences is helping us create a model system of redressal that reaches out to all women in the informal sector. The plan in the next year is to advocate for replication of this model at the National Level.

Simultaneously, we are in touch with the National Commission for Women to generate awareness on setting up and effective functioning of Local Committees.