On Tuesday, February 8, 2022 the Palau Chamber of Commerce held a productive monthly General Membership Meeting on Zoom meetings. This is due to the current COVID-19 spread in Palau, so all meetings will be held virtually until further notice, to comply with the safety measures by the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
The special guest speakers for the PCOC meeting were Ms. Lori Williams, International Organization for Migration (IOM) Consultant and Mr. Raymond August, Chief of the Employment Services Division, who presented on Palau's Human Trafficking situation, gave an overview of Palau’s anti-human trafficking unit (AHTU), labor trafficking issues that fall within the Ministry of Human Resources, Culture, Tourism and Development, potential victims and traffickers, signs and indicators, TIP Report and suggestions and recommendations for the business community.
The second special guest speakers were three representatives of Horwath HTL: Ms. Josephine Chong, Ms. Jennifer Davey and Mr. Damien Little. Their company is a hotel, tourism and leisure consulting company that covers every aspect of hotel real estate, tourism and leisure development. They presented their annual survey, which is relied upon by hotel operators, owners and operations analysts for benchmarking, budgeting and planning via the presentation of aggregated, market-wide operating, financial and marketing data, with the hopes that Palau Chamber of Commerce members will be interested in participating in the survey.
On behalf of the Palau Chamber of Commerce membership, President Samuel Scott thanked all the guest speakers and expressed his hope for future collaborations with the Anti-human trafficking Unit, the International Organization for Migration, as well as Horwath HTL.
The next PCOC General Membership Meeting is scheduled for March 8, 2022, happening virtually.