A new draft bill approved by the legal and legislative committee of the nation's National Assembly to reduce expat population in Kuwait could result in 8 lakh Indians leaving the country. The bill states that the Indian expatriate community should not exceed 15 per cent of the national population. With over 9 lakh Indians residing in the nation, around 8 lakh of them might be required to leave Kuwait.
Speaking to state-run Kuwait Television, Interior Minister Anas Al-Saleh said the government has a complete draft law proposing to “upgrade the residency law”, which will be sent to the Assembly within the next two weeks. The draft law, submitted by five MPs, “is in line with the Kuwaiti constitution and laws”, the legal and legislative committee found.
The bill will now be forwarded to the concerned committee for consideration. The legislative move is an attempt by Kuwait to rectify its ‘demographic imbalance’. According to the Kuwait Assembly Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanem, the country Kuwait has a real problem in its population structure, in which 70 per cent are expats. What is more serious is that 1.3 million of the 3.35 million expats “are either illiterate or can merely read and write”, who is not the people Kuwait really needs, he told Kuwait TV recently.
The speaker said the draft law they intend to file will propose to impose a cap on the number of expats, whose numbers must decrease gradually by stating that this year expats will be 70 per cent, next year 65 per cent and so on. The anti-expat rhetoric has spiked since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with lawmakers and governmental officials calling for reducing the number of foreigners in Kuwait.
Last month, Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah said the Gulf state would like expat numbers to reduce to 30 per cent of the country’s population—down from 70 per cent at present. That would require cutting down the number of foreign workers by around 2.5 million.
Meanwhile, MPs have already called to replace all expat jobs in the government within one year. In May, it was announced that Kuwait’s Municipality will soon dismiss all expat employees and replace them with Kuwaitis.
Kuwait said in June that it will ban the employment of expatriates in state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) and its subsidiaries for the year 2020-21.
The decision also calls for freezing employment applications from expats, cancelling appointments under process and not renewing the contracts of existing employees. Last year, MP Safa Al Hashem also urged Kuwait to expel close to two million expatriates from the country over the next five years. She said that it was essential to have Kuwaitis number more than 50 per cent of the country’s population.
