Cases Reported on Sexual Harassment in Malaysia :: Legal Issues, Misconduct

1.0 Edaran Communication SB lwn Tahar Mohamed (1998) 3 ILR 487 The accused was terminated from his position in the company due to his immoral acts toward his subordinate female workers. According to the Company Second Witness (C2W) who is an officer cleaner, the accused has been harassing her from February until March 1997. The accused has touched her on her shoulder and constantly asking her to go out for a date. However, C2W rejected the invitation every time he asked her and that led to the constant invitations by the accused. In another occasion, C2W was asked by the accused to clean a room in the office was later she found out it do not need to be cleaned. Later, the accused pull her arm and asked her to sit but victim freaked out and leave the room. In the last occasion, the victim was hugged from back while she was performing her duties. All complains showed that the accused has used his superiority to dominate his subordinate. This is a major situation in most sexual harassment cases either in workplace, home and even in universities. Pe ople, who owned a higher degree of authority (usually male) and have a sexual harassing tendency, would use this opportunity as a weapon against his victims. In Edaran Communication, the accused had also harassed the tea-lady (C3W) by holding her hand, constantly inviting her to go out and also inviting her into an empty room which scared the victim that he might harass her. The patterns done were similar to the same pattern done towards C2W. This proved that harasser will copy his previous act toward the other victims if he thinks it will work on her too. The company in this case, Edaran Communication SB has an effective human resources management where the complaint board does not only cover clerical workers and officers but cover the cleaners who are not permanent workers in the company. The victims had made complaints to the board and according to the Company Sixth Witness (C6W), they had called the accused for investigation process. The accused then denied the allegation, and the company asked him to provide a written replied to deny the allegation made but he failed to do so. Later, the company disciplinary board found him guilty for the charges alleged based on evidences provided and he was dismissed. He claimed that the dismissal was unlawful.