KUWAIT CITY, March 8: Two months after the parliamentary special committee meeting that discussed security situation in the country, the Ministry of Interior has started implementing strategic plan prepared to restructure Kuwait’s population by arresting and rectifying the status of almost 100,000 laborers violating visa and labor regulations.

The ministry is stepping up coordination among the concerned bodies and ministries to cover the loopholes in recruiting manpower from abroad. Among the loopholes are commercial visit visa procedures, transfer of visas in the Labor Ministry and bogus companies.

In this contest, high ranking security sources disclosed that the Interior Ministry has noticed a remarkable increase in the number of bogus companies whose owners bring in thousands of expatriate workforce.

They warned that some of these bogus companies bring under their sponsorship individuals who have links with Islamist groups in many Arab countries, and in the end, their sponsors deliberately register absconding cases against them in police stations, which makes it difficult to track them inside the country.

Sources mentioned that the Interior Ministry will gradually approach the issue with a well-balanced plan to organize surprise house raids in areas where visa violators are mostly found. Violators will be arrested and necessary security and legal measures will be taken against them, and they will be deported eventually.

There is coordination between the Ministry of Labor and Ministry of Commerce and Industry to close the files of bogus companies and stop their owners from cheating the law by new companies they establish to carry out human trafficking activities.

They pointed out that Ministry of Interior has discovered new tricks used by the owners of bogus companies to hide from the law by filing “absconding cases’’ against their bogus employees, adding the ministry will cooperate with Labor Ministry to close the files of these bogus companies and hold them accountable in the eyes of law.

With regard to number of specific nationalities surpassing the total number of Kuwaiti population, sources emphasized that the ministry is not planning to target any nationality; instead, it will approach the issue according to law by tracking visa violators, citing those without valid residency, those working for other sponsors, domestic servants on Article 20 and marginalized workers.

Despite the number of visa violators has reduced from 120,000 since 2011 to 90,000 or 100,000 this year, the concerned state bodies indicate the population of Kuwaitis has reduced to about 31 percent since last year, and the issue calls for strategic plan on the state level to fix this fault in population structure.