The Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) has threatened to drag the Department of Water and Sanitation to the Parliament’s Portfolio Committee due to its failure to implement the recommendations made a while ago.
The CGE has called on the department to provide a clear account of progress made on its previous commitments to advancing gender equality and transformation in the workplace.
These commitments followed the commission’s findings, recommendations and included promoting gender-responsive policies, implementing training, developing women for senior leadership roles, and advocating sector-wide standards, including on harassment management.
The commission’s North West Provincial Manager Princess Malebye told YOUFM Newshour that CGE has vehemently condemned the reluctance of the department to implement its recommendations.
She said that the commission found that there is a general lack of prioritisation within the department.
“It has moved towards a new policy, but that itself has not been ratified and the department has indicated that they would do it in a couple of months.
But of course, that is still insufficient for us as the commission, and so as part of this accountability session we have sent the department back to bring us a concrete plan of action.
What we endeavour to do is to report the department to parliament and the specific portfolio committee to raise some of these concerns, as you know as the chapter 9 institution we report directly to parliament, and we need to take this to the portfolio committee to deal with the department,” said Malebye.
Furthermore, the commission said the department had undertaken, during prior hearings, to implement specific measures aimed at mainstreaming gender within its programmes and addressing persistent gender transformation gaps that disproportionately affect women and girls, particularly in the workplace and in access to services.
Meanwhile, the commission said that it has uncovered a widespread complaint of sexual harassment in various spheres of government, both in public and private sector.
“This problem is persistent across the workplace in both the public and private sector.
The CGE does systemic investigations that look at both sectors as mandated by the constitution of the republic as a chapter 9 institution in section 187 and so we also see that it is widespread across the workplace.
But when we look at the public sector, we note a specific concern around how rife the issue of sexual harassment is across the national, provincial and local government,” explained Malebye.
She expressed concern that this has been a persistent problem, for more than a decade.
“This is a worrying trend. If you look at the commission’s work over the last 10 years, you will see that that is a persistent problem.
In fact, this year we were conducting an audit across all the government departments to see how serious the problem is and what areas of intervention are of critical importance,” remarked Malebye.
