Interior Ministry, PACI database link to help locate suspects

The Civil Service Commission

KUWAIT: The Civil Service Commission (CSC) continues to replace expatriate employees with Kuwaitis in different ministries and governmental bodies as part of its 'Kuwaitization' plan. Speaking to the press yesterday, the commission's Chairman Ahmad Al-Jassar said that CSC was currently targeting the Kuwaitization of 3,140 jobs of the total employments in the country. He added that these include 15 job descriptions fitting the criteria, with the exception of the ones in the medical field. The strategy, which was approved during the fiscal year 2017/2018, aims to provide Kuwaitis with job opportunities as part of the country's developmental plan, Jassar noted. The government has given instructions to each state department to achieve complete Kuwaitization of their respective staff by 2022, but this task has proven very challenging for certain departments including the education and health ministries which heavily rely on technical expatriate employees.

In other news, the government decided recently to assign Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Khaled Al-Jarrah Al-Sabah to take responsibility over the Public Authority for Civil Information; a step that a security source described as 'important' because it leads to linking the two authorities' databases with each other. Such linkage will help law enforcement authorities locate suspects using address data of citizens and expatriates stored in PACI's database, Al-Rai reported yesterday quoting the anonymous source. Furthermore, the link should contribute to the state's efforts in addressing the country's demographic imbalance by giving police easy access to information that help them fight visa trafficking and pursue residency violators, the source added.