Rights panel may invite premier over bedoon rights

KUWAIT: The Civil Service Commission informed a National Assembly panel yesterday that the government has so far this year replaced between 2,000 and 2,500 expat civil servants with Kuwaitis, a lawmaker said.

Rapporteur of the assembly human resources committee MP Mohammad Al-Huwailah said the commission also said that it replaced 3,150 expat employees last year, in a bid to create more jobs for Kuwaiti graduates.

The recently-established committee aims at pressuring the government to accelerate the process of replacing some 80,000 expatriates still employed in the government departments, mostly in highly-skilled jobs, mainly in the ministries of education and health.

The committee has held several meetings with government officials and stepped up pressure on the civil service commission and ministries to find jobs for some 8,000 Kuwaitis listed as job-seekers.

In the meantime, the assembly human rights committee said it may invite the prime minister to a meeting to discuss reported pressures on thousands of stateless people or bedoons in a bid to force them to reveal their actual citizenship.

Head of the committee MP Adel Al-Damkhi said the committee yesterday met with the interior minister and discussed a draft law providing broader civil and humanitarian rights for bedoons. Damkhi said the bill is expected to be debated in the national assembly in the next session amid a controversy between supporter and opponent lawmakers.

He said the government did not give a clear opinion on the bill which seeks to give bedoons full human rights until their decades-old problem is resolved. MP Safa Al-Hashem meanwhile said she was opposed to the draft law for fear it could open the way for large-scale naturalizations and therefore undermine the identity of Kuwait.

MP Riyadh Al-Adasani threatened yesterday to file to grill Information Minister Mohammad Al-Jabri a second time if the session next Wednesday to vote on a no-confidence motion turns into sectarian or tribal session. The lawmaker, who grilled the minister along with MPs Damkhi and Mohammad Al-Dallal, said the minister did not answer many accusations in the grilling.

By B Izzak