Education Minister
Dr Bader Al-Essa

KUWAIT: The parliament’s legislation committee is scheduled to meet today and discuss a proposal made by MPs Humoud Al- Hamdan, Ouda Al-Ruwaei, Mohammed Al- Huwailah, Ali Al-Khamees and Hamdan Al- Azmi to amend article one of law number 24/1966 pertaining regulating higher education at Kuwait University, the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET) and private schools.

In their proposal, the lawmakers urged the government to develop colleges, buildings and labs at both Kuwait University and PAAET to ensure preventing coeducation, which was deemed as an attempt to manipulate the constitutional court ruling in this regard.

Minister of Education Dr Bader Al- Essa stressed that PAAET was keen on developing its buildings in a way that allocates special places for male and female students, with only one exception - the nursing college, where female students outnumber male ones, with the result of having one male student at most in a group of female students. Essa added that fully preventing coeducation was fully observed in designing the new Sabah Al-Salem University, which includes two separate campuses.

Municipality law The parliament’s activities committee is scheduled to discuss the municipality law for the third time in a fortnight today, to be referred to the parliament for Monday’s session, said informed sources. The sources added some MPs were expected to demand reducing the minimum educational qualification for a candidate running for municipal council elections from university degree to diploma or high school certificate.

Expat nurses The Ministry of Health’s (MoH) assistant undersecretary for assisting medical services Dr Jamal Al-Harbi said that Civil Services Commission (CSC) law number 5/2009 pertaining with nursing staff was fair towards expats rather than citizens. Harbi added that the ministry had met CSC officials to discuss improving the working conditions of Kuwaiti nursing staff members. Harbi also stressed the need to hold the heads of ambulance centers accountable for any negligence and said that the ministry was considering a new system of incentives, such as selecting the center, the area leader and the paramedic of the month, paying training and meal allowances of up to KD 100 to paramedics and not to administrative staff. In other news, CSC reaffirmed the illegality of allowing government employees to study and work at the same time, except with official permission from the body they work for.

Sewer closed The Environment Public Authority (EPA) prepared a schedule for closing the Ministry of Public Work’s (MPW) sewer outlets into Kuwait Bay to prevent polluting the bay’s water. According to the plan, it will start by closing the Ghazali sewer line next month, and thus prevent over 100,000 liters of sewage water from being pumped into the sea daily from Jleeb Al- Shuyiukh alone, as it had been designed to house 50,000 people but has a population of over 300,000.

By A Saleh