KUWAIT: The Public Authority of Manpower’s expatriate labor shelter. — KUNA

KUWAIT: The Public Authority for Manpower (PAM) began implementation of a new procedure at its labor shelter that will significantly help the shelter's management identify the victims of human trafficking among the female inmates there.

This was announced by the Center Supervisor Falah Al-Mutairi, saying in a statement yesterday that new indicator that will be added to the procedures of the shelter is called 'The Indicator of Discovering Labor Exploitation.' It has been used with the help of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and financed by the Secretariat General of the Higher Planning and Development Council, he added

Mutairi said the exploitation indicator is taken from the 'Delphi method' which seeks to determine indicators of human trafficking through the agreement of experts working in various scientific fields. He said the 'Delphi method' is a survey utilized by the International Labor Organization (ILO) to identify indicators of human trafficking and is based on two electronic surveys. He said experts were selected from 27 member countries in the European Union who work in police, government bodies and academic institutions, NGOs and international societies including the IOM and labor inspectors. Mutairi said the shelter is for women only and was established in 2014. It can accommodate 500 women, and houses nearly 300 foreign laborers most times.

Electronic portal

Meanwhile, Deputy Director General of PAM Khuloud Al-Shihab said processing of transactions at the labor department through the electronic portal is done at a higher successful rate as the body is nearing the completion of transferring and enhancing the electronic system in all labor departments. She said that thousands of transactions were processed on Thursday, while collecting more than KD 120,000 through K-net.

"The automation system to process transactions at the labor departments used to follow MSAL and was operated by the Civil Services Commission. When PAM was founded, the system continued being run by the CSC until a month ago," Shihab said. He said transactions of 646 companies out of 13,819 registered companies were processed through the electronic portal on Thursday, Aug 18. The number of work permits issued was 294, and those for the first time was 270, while the number of renewed permits totaled 3,468 on this day, while 68 permits and 75 national labor permits were cancelled.

Electronic chip

The Health Ministry will start a series of meetings with the Public Authority for Civil Information to complete the birth certificate project through the 'electronic chip' system instead of paper before the end of the year. Health Ministry Assistant Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Dr Mahmoud Al-Abdelhadi said issuing smart card aims at preventing forgeries and manipulations the previous certificates may be exposed to, as well as damage. He said a smart birth certificate will be provided with a chip that saves all information. He said another project is to have machines at maternity hospitals similar to those for civil IDs, where the parents place documents and the name of the newborn, then receive the card from the machine.

Possible forgery

Kuwait Municipality is investigating possible forgeries in documents of Iranian fish shipments at Doha port, as they do not have official certificates and have contradicting dates. The Municipality said transactions to be checked go back six months, adding that the shipments do not have certificates confirming that they are fit for human consumption, and were only examined visually and there is no evidence that they were examined in the laboratory. The inspection department at the municipality admitted the suspicions are true in an answer to a complaint sent to the minister.

By A Saleh and Meshaal Al-Enezi