KUWAIT: Victoria Orero from the US Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking (second from left) is taken on a tour inside the labor shelter yesterday.

KUWAIT: Officials at the labor shelter operated by the Public Authority for Manpower received yesterday Victoria Orero from the US Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, who was accompanied by a delegation including the US embassy's political officer Lloyd Freeman, the embassy's political affairs officer Ahmed Fauzi and Sara Al-Saleem, a legal researcher from Kuwait's foreign ministry.

The visit comes after a request from the US State Department's human trafficking office. The delegation met the labor department assessment and follow-up manager Salem Al-Ajmi and shelter manager Falah Al-Mutairi, and briefed them about the social, psychological and legal services the shelter provides. The delegation also toured the shelter's facilities.

Databases

Secretary general of the Supreme Planning and Development Council Khaled Mahdi said that in collaboration with the Audit Bureau and UNDP, the council's secretariat general is putting final touches to special databases for the health, education and oil sectors according to international standards and regulations, so that they develop the Audit Bureau's abilities and manpower resources to enable it to perform better monitoring of various state establishments' performance. Speaking to reporters after the first workshop organized by the Audit Bureau, Mahdi said that the workshop was meant to set paths through which the executing company PWC would provide consultancy. Mahdi added that within an agreement signed by Kuwait and UNDP, further workshops will be held jointly by the Audit Bureau and the Supreme Council for Planning and Development in this regard.

By Meshaal Al-Enezi