KUWAIT: Well-informed educational sources stressed the need to reach a final decision on the incentives offered to certain Ministry of Education (MoE) Kuwaiti staff members such as psychiatrists, accountants and other technical staff because too much work is needed to serve MoE with 116,000 employees, which made citizens refrain from accepting such jobs and opt instead for other less demanding government jobs.

The sources added that MoE suffers from a dire shortage in the aforementioned jobs after the CSC terminated many expats who had been doing them and citizens appointed to replace them were scared off by the amount of work and the job duties they had to perform in lieu of what they considered as 'low salary'.

"This made 329 out of 379 citizens expected to graduate as social workers and psychiatrists seek out other jobs, leaving only 50 who sought MoE jobs," the sources explained, warning of a serious shortage in other technical jobs such as accountants. "MoE used to have over 300 accountants and this number has drastically dropped," the sources remarked, urging lawmakers to pass a law on citizens' salaries to put an end to this problem.

In other news, informed sources said that "Kuwaiti cultural attaches abroad have not received any decision from the ministry of higher education concerning cancelling Minister Al-Azmi's decision of banning studies abroad for those with high school certificates granted more than two years earlier." They further explained that only a few exceptions for certain cases had been made.

By A Saleh