Education Minister Ligia Deca said on Wednesday, in relation to sexual harassment in universities, that regulations for the operation of ethics commissions at universities will be passed shortly with details of how such commissions can act on their own when there are suspicions or cases reported in the media.
„We, at the Ministry of Education, had various meetings during the month of August. One of them, on August 19, was a meeting of the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Family, the National Council of Rectors, the Council, the Ethics and University Management Commission and all the student federations, precisely to see what the necessary regulations are. The first is a bill which, by amending Ordinance 27 of 2000, allows the submission and processing of anonymous complaints. After the passage of this bill, the Government can proceed with passing an amendment to Government Decision 970 to extend the applicability of the methodology on preventing and combatting sexual harassment as well as moral harassment at the workplace and in the relations between pupils, students and teachers,” Deca said when asked after a government meeting about the legislative changes related to combatting sexual harassment in universities.
She added that the regulation of the operation of the ethics commissions at universities will also be modified.
„At the same time, we are working on updating, depending on the amendment to Ordinance 27, amending education-specific legislation. We will pass in a short time a regulation regarding the operation of the ethics commissions at universities, where, for example, we detail how the ethics commissions in universities can act ex officio if there are suspicions or cases reported in the media, with each university ethics commission being able to take measures accordingly. However, in order to be able to modify everything related to secondary legislation in this area, we need permission to process anonymous complaints.”
Asked about the situation of sociologist Alfred Bulai, Deca said that each university will have to take preventive measures by informing what undesirable behaviour means and what the penalties are.
„We are also contemplating providing central funding for the training of teaching staff in universities to understand very well what the limits of the permitted behaviour are and, once again, we will make changes as soon as Parliament passes the amendment to Ordinance 27, so that the education-specific legislation, the code of ethics and the regulations of the ethics commissions of universities allow anonymous notifications to be processed and the entire area of measures that we have included in the government decision to prevent these situations can be followed.’
AGERPRES
