A bill by Senator Robin Padilla aims have heavier penalties imposed on violators of the Bawal Bastos (Safe Spaces Act) Law of 2019.
Padilla filed Senate Bill 2810, which also increases the prescriptive period for filing a complaint from the current five years to 10 years.
“Employers, particularly large corporations, could easily evade compliance with their obligations under the Safe Spaces Act given the grossly small amount of applicable fines.”
“Recent public hearings of the Senate Committee on Public Information and Mass Media revealed that sexual harassment in the workplace remains active and rampant. It was further observed that employers, particularly large corporations, could easily evade compliance with their obligations under the Safe Spaces Act given the grossly small amount of applicable fines,” the legislator said in his bill.
The lawmaker seeks to amend the Safe Spaces Act of 2019 with heavier penalties including:
* A fine of P100,000 to P300,000 for an employer’s failure to take proper measures to combat gender-based sexual harassment, or failure to create an internal mechanism or a committee on decorum (from the current P5,000 to P10,000 fine); and
* A fine of P300,000 to P500,000 for the employer’s failure to act upon sexual harassment complaints, from the current penalty of P10,000 to P15,000.
The bill provides an automatic award of exemplary damages in the amount of P300,000 in the event of conviction.
The senator also introduced an amendment to the 2019 law to include an automatic award of exemplary damages in the amount of P300,000 in the event of conviction.
“Finally, recognizing the stigma and social exclusion that go together with coping with the trauma caused by sexual harassment, this measure likewise seeks to increase the prescriptive period for filing a compliant from five (5) years to ten (10) years,” he said.
