CHITRAL: The quarterly meeting of Lower Chitral’s district monitoring committee on gender-based violence (GBV) stressed the need for streamlining and regulating the privately owned hostels for girls to contain the harassment cases against women.

The meeting, convened by the Legal Aid Programme for Human Rights (LAPHR), a Chitral-based organisation, was attended by the officials of district administration, police, and the representatives of various civil society organisations with the Assistant Commissioner Dr Atif Jalib in the chair here the other day.

Taking cognizance of the issues emanating from the private hostels of girls’ students in the city, Dr Jalib said that security inspection of all the hostels would be carried out to ensure that the inmates were safe from all kinds of threats, especially cyber-based harassments.

Earlier, the participants pointed out the mushroom growth of the private hostels for girls in the city and pointed out the inadequate security system by the hostels’ owners, rendering inmates to the security issues.

Expressing their apprehensions, the participants said that as per the Protection against Harassment of women at the Workplace Act,2010, all public and private sector ogranisations were bound to constitute a committee to oversee the protection of women at their workplace against harassment, but hardly any organisation had taken a step in this direction.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2024