publish time

04/11/2020

author name Arab Times

publish time

04/11/2020

KUWAIT CITY, Nov 4: The desert has not been spared from the encroachment of marginal workers and others belonging to companies that follow government contracts specialized in transporting waste wood materials, clothes, iron and furnishings from internal roads or containers to a remote location on land. It has turned into a waste-sorting area, under the supervision of Asians, who are also using it as their storage site, in addition to establishing a random market, reports Al-Qabas daily.

Waste sorting (Photo by Bassam Zaidan)

During a tour of the area near the Seventh Ring Road, the daily spotted a group of municipality vehicles and their workers unloading their truckloads in the desert for another group of Asian workers, who prepared other trucks to transport and sort the materials arriving to them in exchange for money.

After raiding the waste materials collection site, the workers - those of the municipality and others - fled, leaving behind their tools and the items that they had collected.

It was later discovered that they were taking advantage of this area and turning it into a random market, spreading their wares there and selling the tools they collected such as hygiene-related materials, toys, clothes, plastic, wood, aluminum, iron and more.

More infringements

Upon delving deeper into the raid area, more encroachments became evident, as marginal workers set up tents to sleep in the place where the remnants of the used materials were collected or what could be called scrapes, in addition to building a series of neighboring shops to carry out some works and violating activities ranging from shaving and food preparation to storage.

On the other side of the site, workers placed a group of abandoned vehicles, which they may have transported during their campaigns or were picked up from roadsides. They were turned into storage for the materials they collected. They took great care to cover them, in order to preserve the materials they contain.

During the monitoring of the trucks to know who were working on what the market needed in terms of materials, it was discovered that some of those trucks used to unload wooden loads known as "palettes" that are currently required in the freight market, skyscrapers and land camps.

Books and documents

Iron, wood, toys and clothes were not the only ones being sold. These workers had placed a bunch of papers and books in one corner. Upon inspection, textbooks were found in large quantities, in addition to papers belonging to the Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation, engineering plans, and so on.

The transporters of these materials work accurately, as the sorting process of the materials is not limited to downloading them from the municipality's trucks to another but they are first classified and then distributed to the waiting trucks, the number of which exceeds seven.

30 workers to deportation

According to an informed source, the tripartite committee, headed by the Public Authority for Manpower, in cooperation with the Residency Investigation Department, periodically conducts a series of raids on random places in Kabd, Wafra, Khaitan, Jleeb, and other areas.

These specialized teams monitor random markets on a weekly basis, often at the end of the week, especially on Friday, as more than 30 violating workers were arrested last Friday in a random market in the Wafra area where they were selling food, vegetables and fruits.

The violators were transferred to the Residency Investigation Department to take legal measures against them, which often ends with deportation.

Ten serious infringements of workers

1- Transfer of waste to the desert, which causes pollution
2- Establishing camps, despite the government decision to prevent this
3- Setting up barber salons in the open, which spreads infections and diseases
4- Profiting from municipality's waste by violating the law
5- Encroachment on state property in remote desert areas
6- Running mobile groceries without a license
7- Exploiting the mechanisms of the municipality to transport private goods and tools
8- Selling expired food commodities
9- Possession of papers belonging to the Kuwait Awqaf Public Foundation, engineering plans, and others
10- Sale of food supplies on land and the acquisition of hazardous waste.

Ten actions required from state agencies

The observers summarized the procedures required of the concerned state authorities to control the labor market and limit violations in the following-
1- Tougher penalties against random workers
2 - Executing intensive campaigns to control violations
3- Summon the sponsors of marginal workers and punish them according to the law
4- Develop an intensive plan to purify the country of marginal workers
5- Avoid submitting to any medium that tries to mediate with the violators
6- Intensify the security presence in the bachelors' areas
7- Refer those involved in managing slums to deportation
8 - Monitor marginal loose workers and those absconding from their sponsors in remote areas
9 - Intensify coordination between the Residency Investigation Department and other concerned authorities
10- Approve a new mechanism for the renewal of residencies based on ensuring that they work with the sponsors.