The Vice-Chancellors’ Committee met in Lahore on Wednesday to formulate an effective strategy to prevent harassment in public places and workplaces.
The committee created by the Governor of Punjab Chaudhry Sarwar convened at the University of Health Sciences with Vice-Chancellor (VC) Professor Javed Akram heading it.
He said that it is necessary to constitute internal inquiry committees in all medical and dental colleges to probe incidents of harassment.
Harassment often goes unreported and research should be conducted based on evidence, said Akram.
Motivational speaker Qasim Ali Shah said that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority should pay attention to the issue of obscenity.
“The whole society has been hijacked by the mobile phones”, he said and added that the laws and regulations of countries with the lowest number of harassment incidents must be researched.
Professor Kanwal Amin from the University of Home Economics also highlighted the role of media in reports of harassment cases.
Conversely, the VC of the University of Education Professor Talat Naseer Pasha claimed that 80 percent of harassment cases are fake.
Religious scholar Maulana Muhammad Yousaf stated that worship controls one against committing evil deeds, and highlighted that the Holy Quran mentions the penalty for misreporting cases.
VC of Rawalpindi Women University Professor Anila Kamal remarked that harassment has always existed but people have started to discuss it more now and suggested that character building of the youth can help to mitigate the issue.
Government College Women’s University Sialkot VC Prof. Rukhsana Kausar, University of South Asia VC Mian Imran Masood, Punjab Tianjin University VC Dr. Abdul Sattar Shakir, SSP Operations Lahore Ismail Kharak, social worker Maliha Hussain, Prof. Sidrah Saleem, Dr. Sara Ghafoor, and Dr. Allah Rakha also attended the meeting.
