ShareKUWAIT: A government source has admitted that the correction of the population structure in Kuwait is not possible, according to a report in Al-Rai daily yesterday. He said the solutions proposed by a higher committee that was formed in 2014 to remedy the demographic imbalance remain only on paper, describing the process as “very difficult”.
The source said it is not possible to rectify the defect the country is suffering from due to the inability of the state to contain marginal and loose labor, and this is considered the core of the problem, especially since their numbers are over 1.8 million. The source said all recommendations and results related to correcting the structure that were reached by the higher committee to study the population structure or other committees will face the obstacle of marginal and loose laborers who are in the country for years, adding that the great majority of these residents are not known and cannot be located.
He said inspection campaigns against residency violators remain the only possible solution currently to eradicate the problem, adding that chasing hundreds of thousands of violators is not easy and needs large manpower and a long period.
He said the state was able to control the entry and exit of new marginal laborers due to strict measures that were applied lately in not bringing in excess labor, in addition to reducing government cleaning and guarding contracts by 25 percent.
The source said the state’s delay in implementing an automated linkage between various state institutions contributed to the escalation of this problem and the increase in the numbers of marginal laborers, especially since some sectors have an illogically large numbers of workers, such as shepherding, fishing and agriculture, estimated unofficially at hundreds of thousands.
Meanwhile, the latest records issued by the central statistics department on Sept 30, 2017 showed an increase in the number of workers in the third quarter by an estimated 31,894 expats, compared to second quarter data last year that showed increased expat labor in the workforce at 29,192 workers, compared to 2,682 Kuwaitis.
