OVER the past few days, two news stories concerning the security sector caught my attention. The first was a disturbing story posted on News Room, in which it was alleged that female security guards were often sexually harassed at their place of employment. Stories of men, one in particular, forcing out sexual favours from the women when they were caught sleeping on the job was something that surfaced to public knowledge through that story.

On the heels of that, came Minister within the Social Protection Ministry, Keith Scott, making statements regarding female security guards and their working hours.
His comments were made at a seminar for security service providers on Thursday. ‘It was focused on private security services within the area of national development; the role of the security services in safety and the economy; the impact of security services on single mothers and the elderly. It also looked at the social impact of the security services on men.’

He called for a policy change for female security personnel, claiming that they should not work at nights, given that the “level of danger to which the family is exposed increases astronomically when that family is headed by one parent only, who happens to be the mother and has to work all night while her children are left unprotected, unsupervised and to the mercies of possible predators.”

Security jobs are often low-paying. As a result, many women who take late hours do so because they have more than one job. They are trying to make ends meet and there are sacrifices that have to be made. If the minister is interested in bettering the lives of security guards, then the thing to do would not be to place a ban on women from working late hours, the plan should be for their wages to be raised and better facilities to be provided for them.

What Scott is aiming to do according to the Department of Public Information, is to develop and implement policies that completely prevent women from working night shifts. There are several things wrong with Scott’s reasoning and I find it hard to believe that his suggestion might have gone through several ministerial challenges without being shot down. One thing that seems to fly over the head of politicians is the reality of the people and the situations leading to the problems. They tend to look at things in isolation.

So when they think of protecting women, they place the responsibility on the women rather than ensuring their administrative systems and sanctions are in place to deal with the offending men. Better yet, they fail to look at the root problem of the issues and when an effort is made towards something it is more of a reactionary approach.

If we are serious about significantly diminishing the cases of sexual harassment in the workplace, then we need to start looking at not only preventative measures. We need to begin the process of education as soon as they are brought into the workforce. Ensure there are classes or informative sessions concerning sexual harassment in the workplace.

Ensure that workplace has a human resource centre to which complaints can be taken and effectively addressed. Do not wait until you receive several complaints and then say that a woman has been placed in a position of power to address the issue as Roshan Khan did. Volda Lawrence was in a position of power as a Minister of Social Protection and she once referred to rape allegations as a “family matter.”

We need to ensure that we not only have women in positions of power, we must ensure the women we promote are capable of the tasks before them and we must ensure measures are put in place to deal with the systemic issues, rather than just being aware of them and watching them continue.