A/HRC/42/44/Add.2 They act as public officer in accordance with Arts. 12-20 of Legislative Decree No. 198/2006, as amended whose tasks include monitoring cases of gender-based discrimination at the workplace, with regard to labour market entry, career advancement, training, salaries, dismissal, and pension. They promote anti-discrimination in active policies, positives actions and any other useful initiative to this end. 27. Article 26 of Legislative Decree No.198/2006 was amended in 2017, by Article 1, para.218, let. b) of Act No.205/2017, by which harassment and sexual harassment fall within the discrimination scope: by doing so, any worker concerned can report it / file a complaint before the local Equality Councillor. Furthermore, Articles 36, 37 enable Equality Councillors to take legal action or intervene in out-of-court settlement-related proceedings, in the event of a discrimination case directly reported to them by the worker victim of discrimination at workplace. Moreover, Equality Councillors work together with labour inspectors at all levels of local administration. This activity is regulated by a specific MoU. 28. Equality Councillors act on behalf of the workers, directly at workplace, as they are established at all administrative levels, regionally, provincially and nationally. 29. With regard to para.94 of the Report (page 14) - distrust by workers during inspection and para. A IV and V bullet points of the Recommendations (page 17) - use of cultural mediators - mention has to be made of the following: 30. We share the observation of the Special Rapporteur on the important role that cultural mediators might play in order to support the inspectors in gaining the trust of migrant workers. Indeed, we believe they could be very helpful not only to overcome linguistic barriers but also to establish a relationship of trust between workers and supervisory authorities. 31. In this respect, we would like to mention two projects that NLI (National Labour Inspectorate) is currently setting up with the aim of fighting labour exploitation and illegal recruitment (caporalato) of migrant workers. Against this background, extraordinary task forces have been planned in targeted geographical areas and economic sectors given their high risk. 32. In particular, the planned task forces will involve cultural mediators assisting labour inspectors in order to ensure the effectiveness of the inspections, thanks to their language and mediation skills. To this end, mutual training pathways for inspectors and mediators are also planned to enhance their capacity to jointly make foreign workers aware of the importance of their collaboration during the inspection (and with the judiciary) in order to have their rights adequately protected (including the right to obtain the special residence permit referred to in Article 22, paragraph quarter, of Legislative Decree No. 286/1998 - so far underutilized) and their exploiters effectively prosecuted. 33. With regard to Para.95 of the Report, it is to be borne in mind that Sen. Mr. M. Salvini is Minister of Interior and Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of Italy. 34. With regard to para.97 of the Report (pages 14, 15) and para.A - III, IV and last bullet points of the Recommendations (pages 17, 19) - implementation of resources available to inspectors and fight against corruption -, mention has to be made of the following. 35. With regard to the Recommendation to 'increase labour inspections in the agricultural sector', we would like to underline that in 2018 the NLI significantly improved the results in its actions against illegal recruitment in agriculture (56 arrests; 243 criminal reports without arrest; over 5.000 irregular workers found at work, out of which 3.350 were totally undeclared) and that this good trend has been further improved in the first 5 months of 2019 (39 arrests; 139 criminal reports without arrest; 1.200 undeclared workers out of 2.400 irregular ones), before the summer period when Caporalato usually reaches its annual peak. 36. With regard to the remark by which, 'inspectors have limited incentives to inspect farms (and) have to use their own vehicle', it should be highlighted that a significant increase of the economic resources dedicated to a number of incentives for inspection activities has been ensured by the INL in the last few years. 37. Besides, within the above-mentioned projects, the renting of vehicles for inspection staff has been envisaged in order to meet the inspectors' requests not to use their own vehicles, 6