The Inquiry Committee Your Company Is Required to Have

There is a phone call every employment lawyer in Pakistan recognises. A harassment complaint has been made — sometimes internally, sometimes already to the Ombudsperson — and the company calling has no committee, no adopted code, and a policy last touched before 2022, if at all. From that position, every option is worse than it needed to be. The committee assembled that afternoon begins its work with its independence in doubt; the statutory clock is already running; and the first document the other side will ask for is the one the company never created. This briefing is about the machinery the law expects to exist on a quiet Tuesday, before anyone complains — as the law stands in July 2026, with the moving details bracketed for verification.

The statute that does not wait for you to grow

Most Pakistani labour legislation reaches an employer only past a threshold — a headcount, a sector, a wage band. The Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act, 2010 has no such gate. It applies to organizations across Pakistan without regard to size, and its central obligations are affirmative: adopt the Code of Conduct set out in the Act's Schedule, display it, and constitute an inquiry committee. These duties exist independently of any complaint. A five-person startup and a five-thousand-person bank carry the same three obligations, and "we are too small for a committee" is an argument the Act has already rejected — the design answer for a small employer is an external member, not an exemption.

What the 2022 amendments changed about who is protected

The Protection Against Harassment of Women at the Workplace (Amendment) Act, 2022 rebuilt the statute's definitions, and any compliance done against the 2010 text alone is now compliance with a superseded law. The amended definitions extend protection beyond women, and beyond formal employees — reaching workers in informal arrangements, persons engaged through third parties, apprentices, interns, trainees, students, and domestic workers; they carry "workplace" past the office walls into work travel, off-site engagements connected with work, and remote and virtual settings; and they widen "harassment" to include gender-based discrimination alongside the original conduct [PRECISE AMENDED DEFINITIONS — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Employers in Sindh should additionally confirm the interaction with the province's own harassment legislation [SINDH STATUTE AND INTERPLAY — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. The test for your current policy is blunt: if it protects only women, only employees, and only conduct on the premises, it is wrong three times.

The committee the Act describes

The inquiry committee is a standing body of three members, at least one of whom must be a woman, drawn from senior management and the workforce, with provision to bring in a member from outside the organization where a suitable internal candidate is not available [COMPOSITION, CHAIR, AND CONSTITUTION TIMELINE — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. Each member should hold a written appointment that names the Act, the role, and the duty of confidentiality. Alongside the committee, the organization needs a named competent authority — the office that imposes penalties on the committee's recommendation — identified in the policy before any case requires one. The Act's penalty structure, divided into minor and major penalties running from censure through dismissal, with compensation capable of being directed to the complainant, belongs to this machinery and not to the ordinary disciplinary code [PENALTY PROVISIONS — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].

The four failures we see most

The first failure is chronology: constituting the committee after the complaint. A body assembled in reaction to a known complainant and a known respondent is structurally compromised before its first sitting, and the inquiry deadline — completion within a short statutory period [TIMELINE — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER] — is running while the company is still choosing names.

The second is composition by convenience: three members who all report into the same executive line, or a committee that is simply the HR department under another name. The Act's mix of management and workforce membership exists to make findings credible in both directions, and a committee the respondent effectively outranks cannot deliver that.

The third is the untrained committee. Members who have never read the Act conduct inquiries that miss its procedure — charges never put in writing, evidence taken from one side only, findings that wander beyond the complaint. A procedurally defective inquiry protects nobody: not the complainant, not the respondent, and not the employer, who inherits the defect in every later forum.

The fourth is the absent conflicts plan. Sooner or later a complaint touches a committee member, a director, or the owner. A policy written on the quiet Tuesday says in advance who steps aside, when an external member steps in, and that complaints against senior management may go straight to the Ombudsperson. A policy written on the loud Thursday says whatever the crisis demands, and reads that way.

The code on the wall

The Schedule to the Act contains the Code of Conduct, and the employer's duties around it are concrete: incorporate it into management policy by a documented, dated act of adoption, and display it prominently at the workplace in both English and Urdu. Non-display is itself a punishable default carrying a fine [PENALTY AMOUNT — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER], and it is the compliance failure easiest to prove, because it is visible from the doorway. For a workforce that is partly remote, the amended definition of workplace points to the obvious extension — the code belongs in the onboarding pack and on the intranet, not only in the stairwell of the head office. Photograph the displays, date the photographs, and repeat the exercise at every new site.

The route you do not control

The Act gives every complainant a choice from the outset: the internal committee, or the Ombudsperson for harassment established at the federal and provincial levels. The choice belongs to the complainant alone. No policy can require internal escalation first, and drafting that attempts it damages the employer in any later proceeding. The Ombudsperson holds the powers of a civil court, summons persons and records, and issues binding decisions, with a representation lying onward [APPEAL ROUTE — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER]. What determines how an employer fares in that forum is almost entirely the paperwork from before the complaint: the adoption resolution, the displayed code, the committee appointments, the training record. With that file, the employer appears as a compliant organization managing an incident; without it, as a defaulter explaining a statute.

The compliance file, item by item

• A dated management resolution adopting the Schedule's Code of Conduct as organizational policy.
• The code displayed at every workplace, in English and Urdu, with dated photographs on file.
• A standing three-member inquiry committee, at least one woman among them, with management and workforce membership and an external member where needed [COMPOSITION — TO BE VERIFIED BY REVIEWING LAWYER].
• Written appointment letters for each member, citing the Act and the confidentiality duty.
• A named competent authority recorded in the policy.
• A policy redrafted after 2022: all genders, non-employees, remote and off-site conduct within scope.
• Both complaint routes — committee and Ombudsperson — stated neutrally, with confidential contact points.
• An express anti-retaliation rule treating reprisal as its own disciplinary offence.
• A conflicts protocol covering complaints against committee members, directors, and owners.
• A training log for the committee, refreshed on every change in membership.
• Inquiry records kept confidential and segregated from ordinary HR files.
• A diarised annual check of displays, membership, and policy currency, plus re-verification at each new office.

What this means for you

If your company has no committee, constitute one this month — not because a complaint is expected, but because the duty is current and the cost of compliance is a fraction of the cost of improvising it under a deadline. If a committee exists on paper, test it: can HR produce the appointment letters, the training record, and a photograph of the displayed code within a day? Redraft any policy that predates the 2022 amendments, and plan now for the complaint that implicates management. Our workplace harassment policy guide covers the inquiry procedure itself in detail, and our HR advisory practice constitutes and trains committees, drafts the conflicts protocols, and acts for employers before the Ombudsperson. The employers who come through harassment matters intact are the ones whose machinery predates the complaint — which is exactly what the Act, since 2010, has been asking for.