Study highlights failure by govt to address ‘unemployment’ problem

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Those rejecting govt jobs to be classified in 3 main categories: CSC

KUWAIT CITY, Aug 6: A parliamentary study highlighted the failure of all procedures taken by the government from 2000 to 2016 to address the unemployment problem, reports Al-Qabas daily. According to the study, the rate of underemployment in the public sector reached 79.4 percent. It also pointed out that the five-year plan (2009 to 2013) and governmental work plans disclosed a total of 21,000 citizens join the labor market yearly within the coming five years based on the educational outputs. In early 1997, the government adopted a three-point strategy to solve the unemployment problem and the rate then was 1.7 percent for males and 0.8 percent for females while the number of unemployed citizens was 3,232 citizens.

The first point of the strategy constitutes replacing expatriate employees in the public sector with citizens by 15 percent per year – around 6,000 employees. The second is training unqualified unemployed citizens in order to appoint them in public and private sectors. Third is encouraging the private sector to absorb as many unemployed citizens as possible. The rate of Kuwaiti employees in the private sector was 1.3 percent in 1996 and it increased to 4.8 percent in 2008. The number of expatriate employees increased by two percent in the last five years and the replacement process has not been fulfilled.

The number of expatriate employees in public sector increased from 68,535 in 2008 to 144,693 in 2016 — 25.6 percent of the total number of employees. The study considered the exclusion of some institutions from the replacement strategy and the rare fields of specialization resulted in the failure of the strategy. The government managed to train 50 percent of the total number of citizens who entered the labor market through the Civil Service Commission and Manpower and Government Restructuring Program. The number of employees in the public sector is expected to reach 375,000 in fiscal 2019/2020. The State laid down two development plans for 2010-2015 and 2015-2019 to depend on the private sector in terms of hiring more citizens.

The target was to increase the number of Kuwaiti employees in the private sector by eight percent. However, despite the efforts done in this concern, the rate of Kuwaiti employees in the private sector is only 6.6 percent.

The number of female employees in the private sector is higher than males — 26 percent compared to three percent. Part of the national workforce in the private sector (4,118 employees) is considered fake employment, whereas the total number of Kuwaiti employees in the private sector was 57,520 in 2010 and it increased in 2015 by 75,308 (31 percent).

The number of expatriate employees in the private sector in 2010 was 1,045,263 and it increased by 321,920 employees in 2015 (31 percent). Meanwhile, sources from CSC has denied reports that those who reject government jobs will be barred from applying for employment even if they had refused more than once, reports Al Anba daily.

They clarified that those who reject the jobs would be classified in three main categories. Such a classification is aimed at achieving justice and equality among all registrants who are wishing to obtain a government job. The first category will include those who rejected once, and the second category those who rejected twice, while the third category will include those who rejected three times or more. The sources affirmed that the first category will have higher priority to apply for jobs if opportunities arise, followed by the second and then third.

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