‘Kuwait named ‘worst destination’ for expats’ – Second year in a row

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KUWAIT CITY, Sept 7: For the second year in a row, Kuwait has topped the list of the countries in the world as the worst destination for expatriates, reports Al-Rai daily quoting InterNations’s annual ranking by Expat Insider, reports Al-Rai daily.

Kuwait shares the bottom region with Italy, Nigeria, Brazil, Turkey, India, the United Kingdom, Greece, Russia and North Korea. This is the fifth time InterNations place Kuwait among the worst destinations for expatriates from 2014 to 2016. It was the second worst destination for expatriates in 2017 before ‘regaining’ the top spot in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

According to the report, which covers 64 countries around the world, Kuwait ranked last in the “ease of stability” and “quality of life” respectively, despite the improvement at the level of “personal finance”, and was placed on par with “leisure options”, “personal happiness”, and the penultimate place on the index of “travel and mobility”, while ranked third in terms of being the worst country in terms of “health and well-being”.

According to the report, about 35 percent of expatriates expressed satisfaction with life in Kuwait, compared to 81 percent in Bahrain, and 84 percent in Oman. In the same context, the report pointed out that Kuwait came as the worst destination for expatriates in terms of “sense of alienation and affection”, and the third worst country in terms of “making friends”, indicating Kuwaitis appear very difficult “to make friends with expatriates residing in their country.”

“While most expatriates are satisfied with the economic situation, Kuwait is the second worst country in terms of job satisfaction,” the report said, stressing that the country offers the worst work-life balance. Thirty-six percent of the expatriates said they were “unhappy in this aspect (work-life balance)”, which is higher than the global average of 21 percent. Add to this the dissatisfaction with the cost of living in the country.

“Despite the good performance shown by other Gulf countries participating in the report on the level of language and communication, Kuwait recorded a decline,” the report said. For its part, the Kingdom of Bahrain topped the list among the Gulf and Arab countries as the best destination for expatriates, and also ranked seventh in the world, followed by Qatar, which came in second place in the Gulf, 18th in the world; Oman in the 32nd place in the world, and the UAE in the 40th place in the world. The report did not mention the classification of Saudi Arabia.

Taiwan topped the list of top international destinations for expatriates, followed by Vietnam and Portugal, as well as Mexico, Spain, Singapore and Bahrain (ranked first globally last year), as well as Ecuador, Malaysia and the Czech Republic.

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