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New Housing, Legal Reforms Planned to Tackle Kuwait's Jleeb Crisis

publish time

01/07/2025

publish time

01/07/2025

New Housing, Legal Reforms Planned to Tackle Kuwait's Jleeb Crisis

KUWAIT CITY, July 1: While long-term redevelopment plans for Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh are expected to take between two and five years, Kuwait Municipality has launched a series of urgent measures aimed at tackling the area’s pressing challenges and preventing further deterioration.

The Municipality recently completed a comprehensive assessment of the situation in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, culminating in a set of proposed solutions spanning regulatory, legislative, and organizational dimensions.

Among the key legislative measures under review is the preparation of a draft law prohibiting the accommodation of bachelors in designated residential areas. The law would empower the Municipality to evict violators administratively and cut electricity and water supplies to non-compliant units. Amendments are also being considered to Municipal Law No. 33 of 2016 to enable the issuance of immediate fines and require property owners or contractors to address violations within a maximum period of six months.

On the organizational front, the source revealed that plans are underway to construct six workers’ cities and 12 labor housing complexes with the capacity to accommodate around 400,000 individuals. However, these infrastructure projects are projected to take between two and six years to complete.

In the interim, the Municipality has identified seven short-term solutions to curb the growing number of single laborers in the area, reduce security concerns, and lower population density:

  • Restricting rental properties strictly to family housing
  • Permitting labor housing within industrial zones
  • Allowing worker accommodations on agricultural land
  • Issuing storage permits to house workers within large-scale projects
  • Granting a grace period for violators to regularize their property status, especially where co-ownership data is incomplete
  • Linking laborers directly to specific government and private project sites in coordination with the Public Authority for Manpower
  • Undertaking partial repairs of the area’s most severely affected infrastructure

Officials emphasize that these combined efforts are designed to provide immediate relief to Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh while laying the groundwork for sustainable urban management in the years ahead.