Your Highness the Prime Minister, prosecute the corrupt and negligent

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THE State of Kuwait ranks 85th globally in the Corruption Perceptions Index. This means that the oversight bodies in this country have underperformed.

During the oath-taking session, when His Highness the Amir rang the alarm bell in his speech regarding the situation in the career aspect, and held the Council of Ministers and the parliament responsible for tampering with job appointments, there is no doubt that things have gotten out of hand in the state institutions, that illegal practices influenced the executive decisions, and sabotage became the norm of operation in the country.

This can only be solved by serious and radical reform, and definitely not through “let bygones be bygones”, because this principle is what caused the spread of direct and indirect corruption, and transformed institutions into parliamentary farms and electoral funds, and led to illicit enrichment of ministers and senior officials.

It is as if the state is a piece of cake, and any corrupt person has the right to waste his share of it without being held accountable.

Your Highness the Prime Minister, corruption not only involves embezzlement from public finances, maximizing the costs of tenders by two or three times their actual value, or delaying the completion of projects in an effort to increase profits through executive orders.

Rather, the greatest corruption is appointing unqualified people in executive positions, especially those with false certificates, and giving these people the nail and hammer to issue decisions that negatively affect society as a whole.

This is what the Acting Minister of Interior Sheikh Fahad Al-Yousef spoke about when he stressed that Kuwait is being deprived of expertise due to foolish decisions, including the one that prevents a resident who has reached the age of sixty from renewing his residency.

Likewise, other decisions and laws indicate the foolishness in dealing with the country’s affairs, under the slogan of reforming the so-called demographic structure, and other things that burden the citizens and residents, which results in the citizens moving to other countries to implement their projects, while the residents end up leaving the country.

There is no doubt that this tampering with appointments has made Kuwait repulsive of everything, starting with investments and capital flight abroad, all the way to the tailors’ crisis. It did not take into account the direct and indirect losses for the national economy.

Most of the 380,000 Kuwaitis working in the public sector are administrators, and are not the craftsmen and professionals that the country needs. Half of the residents of Kuwait are domestic servants and drivers. This is what has deprived us of the productive workforce and paralyzed the country’s development.

Your Highness the Prime Minister, there should be accountability for all those who caused this tampering with appointments, that is if there is a serious reform process. All those who made these foolish and fraudulent decisions should be tried; otherwise corruption will continue.

There must be clear and strict criteria for appointments, and work should be done like in other countries. There must be a secret agency directly linked to the Prime Minister that provides honest reports about the individuals who are chosen to fill any position, and that there should be no recruitment based on nepotism.

Over the past three decades, we have seen what favoritism and quotas have done, even in appointing ministers and undersecretaries, and not just in regular jobs. This must be tackled; otherwise it will be like someone blowing on a broken pipe.

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

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