Kuwait bent on eradicating human trafficking – official ; Cleaning firms face KD 3m penalties

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BEIRUT, Dec 3, (Agencies): Kuwait is at the forefront of humanitarian work and has passed legislations criminalizing human trafficking, said Director for Expatriate Labor Housing in Kuwait Falah Al-Mutairi on Thursday. Kuwait furthermore applies to the letter all international agreements on human trafficking and is currently taking part here in Beirut in the second regional dialogue on this problem, he told KUNA. He specified that the new Kuwaiti labor law for 2013 deals with human trafficking as does the human trafficking law issued in the same year in addition to the 2015 domestic workers law.

Victims
For victims of human trafficking in Kuwait, there is an expatriate labor housing center, headed by Al-Mutairi, which takes care of these victims until their status is improved by providing them with sustainable jobs. In similar remarks to KUNA, executive director of the Kuwait institute for human rights, Adel Al-Qallaf, said the meeting here shed light on the necessity for civil society organizations and governments to address together the problem of human trafficking. He reiterated Kuwait’s commitment to root out this international scourge. Beirut is hosting this regional meeting in conjunction with The International Organization for Migration (IOM) with participants from governments and civil society organizations in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa.

Acting Director of Kuwait Municipality Eng Ahmad Al- Manfouhi revealed that KD 3 million will be cut from the cleaning companies because of the violations committed by them as well as the other financial cuts imposed on officials of the municipality in an unprecedented manner, reports Al-Rai daily. He announced that the State Minister for Municipal Affairs and Minister of Communications Essa Al- Kandari formed a committee to investigate the observations of the State Audit Bureau concerning the deterioration of the cleanliness level in the country.

During a session of the Municipal Council on Monday, Al-Manfouhi indicated about a plan to classify contractors and demand bank warrants for demolition process. He revealed that the municipality has formed an investigation committee to study the file of demolitions, indicating that this issue is the legal responsibility of the consultative office due to which it is very important.

In another development, the Public Authority for Housing Welfare (PAHW) will sort out 107,000 housing grant applications in line with the proposal of the parliamentary Housing Affairs Committee to specify the actual number of applications and to review them thoroughly, reports Al- Qabas daily quoting sources. Sources said this step might lead to the cancellation of 23 percent of the applications — around 25,000 — in case proven that the applicants have violated the housing care regulations.

Housing
Sources added the committee called for closer coordination between the authority and Justice Ministry to look into the divorce cases to verify if the divorcees have children, or to suspend the current application and refer it to the concerned authorities to ensure the applicant deserves the housing grant or not. Sources went on to say many applications were submitted by divorcees who have no children; in addition to several other cases like those with dual nationalities, those stripped of their citizenship, and those who are residing abroad. Sources pointed out all of these are against the housing care regulations. Sources asserted the applications found to be laden with irregularities will most probably be cancelled rather than suspending them, because the latter allows erring applicants might use the date of the first marriage as justification. In another development, Al-Nahar daily has reported that PAHW will reduce the number of expatriate employees under the one-year contract system and then replace them with Kuwaitis.

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