ShareKUWAIT: In a bid to combat bureaucracy issues, better the working relations between government sectors and promote transparency, the government has asked its ministers, to decrease the number of sectors in their administration, by either canceling commissions or by merging sectors of a similar nature. Government sources have said that advanced global research indicate-smaller sectors and a lean hierarchical structure would help improve the overall management performance, by making it easier to control inflation and employment.
"Employee wages, which consist of two thirds of expenditure have come at the expense of infrastructure projects, economic development, and efforts to attract foreign investors and diversify the economy," the source noted.
"The increase in the number of sectors has caused previous governments to face issues arising from miscommunication and a lack of productivity. This has further complicated the merging of some sectors and the refusal of the outbranching of government sectors, which usually causes delays in government procedures."
Sources added that there are also plans, to end some independent commissions, which are considered as ministries with their own structural organizations, but do not contribute any serious benefit to the state. These commissions include the Quran and Sunnah commission, which can fall under the management of the Ministry of Endowment and Islamic affairs and the Road and Land Transportation Commission, which is to be shifted to the Ministry of Public Works.
Other commissions that are going to be merged or removed include independent financial and economic units such as competition protection agencies, which will be shifted to the Ministry of Commerce, financial supervision will be shifted to the Ministry of Finance and the nutrition commission, which will be a part of either the Ministry of Health or the Kuwait municipality.
The source also revealed that units such as the commission of agriculture and commission of the environment, may also be merged, due to their relation with each other, which could benefit the managerial team, reduce economic spending and boost its production.
"Leaders in these commissions are either going to be retired or they are going to be transferred to the newly merged sectors as per the needs of the sector and based on their productivity previously," sources said, pointing to the fact that most of them, are going to be requested to retire, especially, since they have been serving for over eight years, without any improvement in productivity in the sectors they previously worked in.
Sources have also said that by merging and canceling these sectors, efforts can now be taken to improve the Kuwaitization process, by replacing expatriate workers with Kuwaiti nationals in the vacant positions.
