The Human Resources Ministry receives between 5 to 10 complaints from women employees regarding sexual harassment problems in the factory and manufacturing sectors, since the code was launched August 17, 1999. However, the ministry will not take any actions to the employers who failed to implement the code of practice, but only will issue a warning letter to these employers to force them to do so.
As of this year, the labor department has acknowledged receiving only 100 complaints of sexual harassment in the past few years, although common sense dictates that the number must definitely be higher.
Dato' Lim Ah Lek was quoted as saying that the problem was quite bad in the country although he was unable to give further details to the extent of the problem. The seriousness of the problem is beyond dispute. He also stated that the number of non-reported sexual harassment cases in Malaysia as higher than those in developed countries, as there is ample evidence that a high percentage of sexual harassment cases go unreported. .
Dato' Dr. Affifuddin Omar, the deputy Human Resources Minister stated that the ministry is not denying that there are possibilities that almost 70% of women employees specifically in the manufacturing industry are being sexually harassed. It is based on the fact that the country is in the process of becoming a developing industrialized country. Industrialized countries like the U.S, Japan and Europe usually have to deal with this matter. Since 3 years ago, the ministry received approximately 75 sexual harassment complaints from this industry. However, the complaints were only made after the victims quit, and realized that they were no exact place to report and ended up with severe depression.
There was a research done in 1999, identifying that there were only 5.2% men and 30% women employees claimed that they were sexually harassed, but there were exactly 83.1% men, and 87.
