MoI gets access to addicts’ info; foreign missions only by Kuwaitis

KUWAIT: Laboratories of the interior ministry will have digital access to labs of the addiction treatment center and the health ministry for securing data of patients’ blood samples. The automated system linking the computer systems of the three entities’ laboratories has been set up for the first time in Kuwait, said Du’aa Al-Khaldi, director of the medical laboratory services department, in a statement yesterday. The electronic linkup is designed to avert “manipulation of the addicts’ (blood) samples,” she explained.

Separately, an official foreign ministry source said yesterday all staff at the ministry are Kuwaiti citizens and are solely tasked with missions abroad. The source, in a statement, was reacting to a report published by a local newspaper in the context of replies by Deputy Prime and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Hamad Al-Sabah to an

MP’s query and the latter’s statement that the foreign ministry has dispatched expatriate personnel abroad on missions for the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED).

The ministry’s entire staff - including diplomats and administrative personnel - are citizens; except for two

from sisterly Arab states; who are assigned to perform legal consultative missions, the official source said. Only (Kuwaiti) diplomats and administrative staff are tasked with missions abroad as part of their work, he reiterated.

As for KFAED, chaired by Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled, it is an independent authority. The fund’s operations in aid beneficiary states require multiple travels by its technical team, which includes experts and advisors in engineering, economics and laws. The technical staff conducts some 23 missions abroad annually, in addition to other tasks by follow-up teams. Up to 61 percent of the technical team members are Kuwaitis.