How did we become a community in our country?
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HERE in our dear homeland Kuwait, we Kuwaitis have become a community because of the groups that fill their pockets with our money (may God punish them) and enjoy spending our money.
We really have become a community in our homeland – this is something that some countries witnessed.
The tragedy is that we have become a minority here. According to the latest figures on the numbers and nationalities of the population in Kuwait, we have become the third community in number!
The first place for the highest number of residents in Kuwait is taken by our Egyptian brothers in humanity, the second place by the Indians, and we come in third place. This is an unprecedented matter, something that the decision-makers must take seriously and work on amending the situation as soon as possible.
Will we see this dream come true when we are alive, or will it be one of the wishes of our children or grandchildren?
As I said or thought, the reason for us being a minority in our homeland are the visa traders who filled Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, Bneid Al-Gar, and similar areas with workers who do not work. Rather, they are looking for work in exchange for hundreds of dinars, which they paid to those traders who brought them, with the help and approval of some employees of the ministries of Social Affairs and Interior to share the profit. The result is that we have ended up becoming a minority in our country.
The latest criminals of visa trade in our afflicted homeland are the offices that recruit domestic workers and deal with almost every home in Kuwait.
As a lawyer, I read the Al-Kuwait Al-Youm magazine every Sunday. One evening around 10 pm, I received a call on my mobile phone from an unknown number. I usually avoid answering unknown numbers, but I decided to answer that call. The caller told me his first name without mentioning his surname or the name of the institution he works for. He called to say he has a domestic helper who wants to work in my house because she had worked in my house for about five years and when she said she wanted to return to the Philippines, my wife had given her all her dues and she left for the Philippines.
The representative of the domestic labor office told me that it would cost me KD 700, so I told him that I would take my wife’s opinion.
I sent an employee from my office to him, and he was told that I had to pay KD 1,700 in cash, so I told him to ignore it.
The same person, claiming to be the director of the domestic labor office, called me and insisted I pay KD 1,700 in cash without a receipt, contract or anything that would prove that he took the amount from me. I refused.
Last Sunday, I read in the official gazette “Kuwait Al-Youm” the ministerial resolution No. 99/2022 regarding the prohibition of cash transactions in offices and institutions that deal with domestic workers. It stipulated that domestic labor recruitment offices licensed to bring in such workers must comply with the regulation that bans dealing with cash for any contract or transaction.
If the price specified by the ministry for Filipino workers is KD 790, how much would the owner of the office earn when he received the money in cash?
This, in my opinion, is one among those who made us a minority community in our country. And I would like to send this message to the decision-maker.
By Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli
Former Minister of Oil
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