The Ministry of Labour will spend half a million dollars in fiscal 2025 to educate workers on their rights of protection as it rolls out the National Workplace Policy on Sexual Harassment.
Though Labour Minister Stephen McClashie admitted this sum may not be sufficient, he said the money would be spent on TV and print ads as many workers did not know their rights.
During a Standing Finance Committee (SFC) yesterday, McClashie said many workers are afraid of being fired for complaining, particularly single mothers, but this should not be so.
McClashie said, “Many women, and I’m not saying it doesn’t happen to men, but many women which you tend to focus on have real issues reporting sexual harassment because of victimisation, because of the shame factor, because they just don’t even know who to go to. Therefore, a lot of our work in 2025 would be sensitisation both to local and migrant workers with regards to their protection and how they can report these matters and not suffer the consequence of being fired, particularly with single mothers who are vulnerable. Therefore, it would be a whole sensitisation process and in order to roll out those things, the $500,000 would be on literature, on ads, on both television and radio. Although we expect to reach many women, we know that that figure is not in fact very high with regards to the work we may still have to do, but it is a start in the right direction.”
McClashie said the ministry had set up a multilingual hotline in English, Spanish and French so that both local and migrant workers could call to make their reports.
To date, it has received a number of calls.
Guardian Media reached out to McClashie to provide statistics on those reports but up to press time received no response.