Decision soon to boost Kuwaitization of insurance sector

KUWAIT: Lawyer Abdullah Marzouq Al-Rasheedi yesterday filed a case to force the Civil Service Commission to terminate the contracts of all expats working in government bodies and replace them with Kuwaitis, especially since many Kuwaiti lawyers are unemployed. Rasheedi said around 30,000 Kuwaitis holding law degrees work for the government and 6,000 others work for the private sector.

"What is the point of employing expats while considerable numbers of Kuwaitis with the same degrees, qualifications and experience are unemployed?" he wondered, claiming that many senior officials do not trust Kuwaiti workers. He alleged one of the health minister's advisors is an expat who gets a monthly salary of KD 2,100 plus other incentives, hajj allowances and free accommodation.

Meanwhile, the ministerial committee studying increasing the number of Kuwaiti workers in the private insurance sector announced that it will issue a decision about increasing those numbers before the end of this year, said official sources. The sources added that according to the new plans, the number of Kuwaitis will increase by 10 percent in less than a year at insurance companies. The sources explained that insurance company owners believe that working in the field of insurance requires special skills, and that Kuwaitis need to undergo special training courses paid for by the manpower authority.

In a related development, the ministry of social affairs and labor decided suspending the issuance of work permits to expats to work in cooperative societies pending replacing them with citizens. Separately, the criminal court yesterday sentenced a Romanian to three years in jail after which he would be deported for attempting to break into a bank's ATM using fake ATM cards he brought to Kuwait with him.

By Meshaal Al-Enezi and A Saleh