Kuwaiti medical scholarship holders criticize stipends cut downKUWAIT CITY, Jan 1: Civil Service Commission (CSC) has lifted ban placed on 127 vacancies for expatriates in the Ministry of Health, reports Al-Anba daily.In a letter to the Ministry of Health which the daily obtained a copy, CSC stated the decision affects 36 vacant positions for doctors, 74 nurses, 16 technicians and one pharmacist. It notified the ministry against filling those vacancies until the salaries of former employees have been paid.It also required the Ministry of Finance to keep the vacancies open on the Health Ministry’s budget for fiscal year 2016/2017. It reiterated the above-stated jobs became vacant since July 11, 2017 until Oct 31, 2017.Meanwhile, some 120 Kuwaiti medical scholarship holders in Canada have criticized the decision of Civil Service Commission (CSC) to cut down their stipends by 20 percent starting from January 2018, reports Al-Qabas daily.Several of those scholarship holders consider the decision unfair; especially as they accepted the offer go abroad due to related benefits that include allowance. They lamented failure of CSC to consider the growing inflation rate reaching 19 percent high over the past 12 years — according to the Canadian Prices Indicator (CPI).They added the decision affects medical scholarship holders assigned to the US, France and other countries, and wondered if this is the proper way of treating future doctors. Furthermore, the Public Authority for Manpower (PAM) has announced that its departments will not receive reviewers on Tuesday as it needs to update its automated system, reports Al- Anba daily.The authority disclosed the system update started Monday and will continue until Tuesday, adding the ‘Ashal’ service is suspended on those days as well. In another development, the E-Crimes Department at the Ministry of Interior posted a warning on its social networking accounts about the hacking of WhatsApp accounts, reports Al-Qabas daily.Besides the warning, the department also enumerated ways to protect WhatsApp accounts through the setting which allows closure of the account in case of hacking.