Municipality staff not paid for months: report; Company plans to file case

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KUWAIT CITY, Aug 17: The workers, suppliers and subcontractors of a major project by Kuwait Municipality have reportedly not been receiving payments or salaries for months, says ArabianBusiness.com.

The project is a parking lot consisting of six floors to accommodate 2,600 vehicles, reported a local daily. It is very sad to see the workers asking for their late salaries every day, said Ertan Bayraktar, director of the subcontracting company of the project. I feel very embarrassed when facing these employees daily, and the hardest situation was when one worker came crying and wanted to kiss my feet to get his salary, as he has two children. I promised to pay him soon, but I do not know how if our problem is not solved.

Bayraktar said he has had to pay more than $2.3 million (KD 700,000) from his own money as a result of the municipality’s failure in giving four delayed payments. He said he had received only the down payment of the contract, which makes up just 10 percent of the project value, and equals to $1.6 million (KD 483,000). He said the legal deadline for providing the first payment of the project was May 2015.

“Since the first eligible payment, we have not received any payments, and today we are entitled to four payments of a total value $4.7 million (KD 1.4 million),” he said. “The last of these payments should have been paid in Oct 2015. We tried to resolve the problem peacefully with the Municipality, but we didn’t reach any result. So within two weeks, we are going to file a case at the court.”

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