28/12/2015
11260 times read
28/12/2015
11260 times read
According to a recent news report by the Arab Times “the decision of Kuwait’s government to reduce the number of expatriates could backfire, considering that 2.9 million of 4.3 million people currently residing in the country are foreign workers, reports Al-Rai daily quoting blouinnews. com – a groundbreaking news website in the US.
Following the announcement made by Minister of Social Affairs and Labor and State Minister for Planning and Development Affairs Hind Al-Subaih on the decision taken by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to force expatriates of all nationalities who are over 50 to leave the country as of March 1, 2016” (Arab Times Dec 25, 2015). I do not agree with the exaggerated conclusion that the recent decision issued by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor to force some expats who are over 50 to leave the country is controversial. There is actually nothing controversial about asking marginal and unprofessional workers to leave the country after the end of their contracts.
Many of those targeted by the recent government’s decision contribute almost nothing to the improvement of our Kuwaiti economy. For example, it is very unlikely that an uneducated, unskilled marginal worker would contribute anything positive to Kuwait. In fact, allowing unskilled or marginal workers to roam freely around Kuwait, do manual or technical work they are not qualified for constitutes a threat to our national security.
Moreover, it is also very logical to ask project managers to expatriate their workers after the conclusion of the project. Allowing workers on contract to transfer their residency (Iqama) to another sponsor is very wrong. Furthermore, it is also controversial to allow some expat journalists and news reporters to describe the Kuwaiti government’s decision relating to necessary amendments of the population structure as controversial.
What is really controversial here is to ignore the conflict of interest, when an expat journalist attempts to distort the effectiveness of a Kuwaiti government’s decision. In other words, the Arab Times or any other English daily in Kuwait has no right to present one side of the story relating to the problem we are currently facing with the awkward imbalance in our foreign population structure. Any country around the world has a right to apply or amend its immigration and labor regulations according to its economic and security needs.
The decision to reduce the number of expats in Kuwait follows the dictates of accurate studies and statistics: if the government decides to deport any number of illegal expats, violators of our immigration and labor laws, it does not violate any human rights laws. Moreover, no one has the right to dictate to our government how it should deal with the security and economic problems created by marginal labors.
I applaud whatever steps the government will take in the very near future to “fix” some chronic illegal expat’s problems. In a couple of weeks, perhaps, we will witness a string of security campaigns targeting those who insist on violating our labor laws. @aljenfawi1969
By Khaled Aljenfawi