28/01/2022
28/01/2022
Whenever the price of a barrel of oil increases, someone who thinks he discovered it and gifted it to the people of Kuwait and its residents will spend extravagantly on himself and those he cherishes.
In fact, remember all the British officials - our brothers in humanity - who established the Kuwait Oil Company, and the true honorable people of Kuwait took over its administration from them!!!
They established the City of Al-Ahmadi, which is comparable in organization and construction to the Kuwaiti cities that were built decades later.
It is the last thing that came to the mind of the current officials of that company whose beards fill their faces as a sign of asceticism, piety and fear of God in the money and conditions of his creation. They recently issued a decision to pay a bonus ranging from KD 6,000 to KD 12,000 per month to the front-liners during the first COVID-19 pandemic.
It is an amount that exceeds what US President Biden and French President Macron and their ilk receive. It is double the salary the person in charge of the oil sector receives.
My salary as the minister of Oil in the 1990s was a little more than KD 2,000. It is certain that the salary has doubled now but does not even reach close to the salary of the Kuwait Oil Company workers during COVID-19 pandemic.
If these workers or employees were mingling with the visitors and the general public such as employees of the Ministry of Health or the police, we would have reluctantly kept quiet. However, these employees of the Kuwait Oil Company were working in offices or supervising Kuwaiti and foreign oil workers.
This is a short story about what is happening in the oil sector at a time when the ministers and leaders of the irrational government call for the policy of austerity, imposing of taxes and approval of the Public Debt Law because bankruptcy is at the door.
On January 19, 2022, an article in Al-Rai newspaper stated that there is a suspicion of wastage of public money in the oil sector, amounting to $223 million, which is just the tip of the iceberg.
The article revealed that the Kuwait Oil Company, led by its Islamist leaders, formed a committee to investigate the observations raised by the State Audit Bureau in its recent report about wastage of more than $223 million of the public money in the company by awarding many contracts of the engineering and support group to inspect wells, and infringing on the company’s interests, as well as by adding change orders that were not presented to the committees and were not included in the final value of the bids.
It is also reported that the company management ignored several mistakes and multiple procedures in 24 contracts, leaving no room for doubt that this was deliberate and not a passing procedural error, as the public money incurred sums amounting to $223 million.
It is news that we dedicate to the new minister of Oil and to the members of the assembly of threats and empty interrogation requests.
Purifying the oil sector from those who waste money is a dire need now and not tomorrow.
By Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli
Former Minister of Oil