Prevention of Sexual Harassment

Who this covers, and where

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 defines a workplace at section 2(o) to include transportation provided by an employer for the purpose of commuting to and from the place of employment. A vehicle on an Om Travels duty is therefore a workplace, and it is a workplace for everyone in it: our driver, our staff, the customer who booked it, and the passengers travelling under that booking.

That reach is the reason this page exists at all. A chauffeur-driven hire puts two people who have never met into a small, closed space, often at an hour when nobody else is about, and it does so on our instruction and on our paperwork. We do not treat that as somebody else’s problem to sort out at the roadside.

Our own people

Every driver on a duty for us, whether he is on our own rolls or engaged through one of our vehicle partners, and every member of our office staff. The standard does not fork by who signs the pay slip, for the same reason set out at /partners/driver-terms.

Anyone travelling with us

The person who made the booking and everyone travelling on it, including an employee travelling on a company account, a guest sent by a hotel desk, and a passenger a travel agent has booked for.

Anyone we work alongside

A vehicle partner, a vendor, a coordinator at a venue, or anybody else our people deal with in the course of a duty.

What counts as sexual harassment

Section 2(n) of the Act defines sexual harassment as any one or more of the following unwelcome acts or behaviour, whether directly or by implication: physical contact and advances; a demand or request for sexual favours; making sexually coloured remarks; showing pornography; or any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature.

Two words in that definition do the work and are worth stating plainly. Unwelcome is judged by the person on the receiving end and not by what the other person says was intended, so "it was a joke" is not an answer to it. And by implication means the behaviour does not have to be said outright: a remark that everybody in the vehicle understood perfectly well is covered even though nothing explicit was said.

On this trade specifically, and because these are the things actually reported rather than the things a policy usually lists: staring at a passenger in the mirror, personal questions of a sexual kind, comments about a passenger’s body or clothing, unnecessary physical contact while helping with a door or with luggage, taking a photograph of a passenger, keeping or using a passenger’s number for anything other than the duty, and altering a route or refusing to stop in a way that leaves somebody unable to get out. All of these are covered and all of them have been treated as covered.

The standard, and it does not depend on who you are

The Act protects women, and the statutory route set out below is the route the Act gives a woman. Our own standard is not limited by gender: sexual harassment of anyone, by anyone, on a duty we are running is a disciplinary matter for us, and a complaint from any person is dealt with under this page in exactly the same way. We have written it that way because a policy that answered only half the people in the vehicle would be no use to the other half.

Nobody is required to put up with something to keep a duty running, and that cuts both ways. A driver may refuse to continue and call the office, and doing so is not a breach of anything and does not cost him the duty. A passenger may end a trip at any point on these grounds and we will arrange for her to be got home.

How to raise a complaint

Write, call or send a WhatsApp message to Sachin Jaglan, Grievance Officer, at +91 99966 69190 or sachin@om-travels.in. There is no form to fill in first, no portal to register on, and no reference number you need before you start. A complaint of this kind is not left on a queue with fare queries: it is picked up as soon as it is seen.

You may complain yourself, or somebody may complain on your behalf with your agreement. If you would rather not speak to the office at all, the route under Going outside us below is open to you and you do not have to come to us first.

Tell us what happened, when, and which trip it was, as far as you are able to. A booking reference, a date, or a driver’s name is enough for us to find the duty slip and the vehicle. You are not required to produce evidence before we will act, and a complaint is not turned away for being made without any.

Under section 9 of the Act a complaint should be made within three months of the incident, or within three months of the last incident where there has been a series of them, and that period may be extended by a further three months where there were circumstances that prevented the complaint being made in time. We do not treat a complaint outside that window as a reason to do nothing: the statutory route has its limit, and our own obligation to look into the conduct of somebody who drives for us does not expire.

What happens once you have complained

Your complaint is acknowledged within twenty-four hours, which is the same undertaking every other complaint route we publish carries, and you are told who is dealing with it.

The driver or member of staff the complaint is about is taken off duty immediately while the matter is looked into. That happens on the complaint alone. It does not wait for the complaint to be proved, it is not a finding against him, and it is not something you have to ask for. The same rule is published to our drivers at /partners/driver-terms and to customers at /legal/women-traveller-safety, so nobody learns it for the first time on the day it is used.

You are not asked to travel with, meet, or deal with that person again while the matter is open, and you are not put in the position of having to explain to him why. If a booking of yours is affected, we re-crew it and tell you it has been re-crewed.

The inquiry then establishes what happened. Both accounts are taken, ours and his, and whatever records exist for that duty are pulled: the duty slip, the booking, the messages, and the tracking record where the vehicle carries one. You are told the outcome in writing.

The Act requires an inquiry under it to be completed within ninety days, the report of that inquiry to be issued within ten days of completion, and action on the recommendations to be taken within sixty days of receiving the report. Where a complaint is being dealt with under the statutory route, those are the periods that apply.

A fair hearing, for the person complained about

A policy that only protects one side of a complaint is not a policy, it is a decision made in advance. Anybody a complaint is made against is told what is alleged, in terms clear enough to actually answer, and is given a genuine opportunity to give his own account before any finding is made. He is not asked to answer a rumour, and he is not told the outcome before he has been asked.

Being named in a complaint is not a finding, and being taken off duty while a matter is looked into is not a punishment. If the complaint is not made out, he goes back on duty, it does not sit on his record as though it had been, and it does not quietly reduce the duties he is offered afterwards.

This matters more in this trade than in an office, because a driver taken off the roster loses his earnings while a matter is open, not merely his desk. We have not resolved that by being slower to act, which would leave a complainant in the vehicle with him. We have resolved it by being quick to finish.

What we do about it

Where a complaint is made out, the action is proportionate to what was found and it is real. Depending on the conduct that means a written warning, retraining, permanent removal from any duty involving that customer, or removal from our panel altogether so that he takes no further duty through us. Where the person is engaged through a vehicle partner, removal from our panel is ours to decide and we decide it, whatever his own employer would prefer.

Conduct that is also a criminal offence is a matter for the police, and that route runs alongside this one rather than instead of it. We will help you make a complaint to the police if you want to make one, and we cooperate with the investigation and provide what our own records show. We will not ask you to choose between the two, and we will not ask you to hold off on one while we deal with the other.

We do not press anybody towards an informal settlement. The Act allows conciliation where a complainant asks for it, and we will not be the one asking.

Confidentiality, and no retaliation

Section 16 of the Act prohibits publication or disclosure of the contents of a complaint, the identity and address of the complainant, the respondent and any witness, the conduct of the inquiry, and the recommendation and action taken. A complaint under this page is handled on that basis: it is known to the people who have to deal with it and to nobody else.

That includes inside the business. A complaint is not discussed on a drivers’ group, it is not the explanation given when a duty is re-crewed, and the reason somebody has been taken off the roster is not offered to whoever asks.

Raising a complaint costs you nothing with us. A customer who complains is not deprioritised, is not quoted differently and is not refused a booking afterwards. A driver who complains, or who gives evidence in somebody else’s complaint, is not given fewer duties, is not moved to worse ones, and is not taken off our panel for it. If any of that appears to be happening, it is itself something to raise, and it is raised the same way.

Going outside us

You do not have to come to us at all, and nothing on this page limits any route the law gives you. The Act provides for a Local Committee constituted by the District Officer for the district, which takes complaints from outside a workplace’s own process, and a complaint may be made there directly. It is a public body, it is not appointed by us, and it does not need our agreement before it acts.

The police route is open in the same way and at any time, whether or not anything has been raised with us. Where the conduct amounts to an offence, going to the police first is not a step out of order and it does not affect anything we then do.

If you have used our route and are not satisfied with how it was handled, that is a grievance about us and it is raised at /grievance-redressal, which publishes its own escalation ladder and timelines.

If you are booking on a company account

A trip we run for your employee can sit within the reach of your own organisation’s obligations as well as ours, because section 2(o) reaches into transport provided for a work journey. Where a complaint arises either way round, your employee against our driver or our driver against your employee, we cooperate fully with whichever process is properly seized of it, give an honest account of what our own records show, including the duty slip and the tracking record where there is one, and do not attempt to settle an inquiry informally on the other side’s behalf. What that means in contract terms is at /corporate/terms.