Expats in public sector on the rise

KUWAIT: The Ministry of Education's (MoE) Human Resources Director Soud Al-Jowaisri strongly denied social media reports about terminating 800 expatriate teachers.  Speaking in a statement he made to German news agency DPA, Jowaisri explained that expatriate teachers who had been notified of the termination of their contracts were those teaching computer science in the primary stage, where the subject was cancelled from the curriculum. Their termination would be effective from August.

"Hearsay stories about terminating expat teachers of social studies, Islamic studies and science is absolutely untrue," he underlined, explaining that there are extra teachers in these subjects, while many Kuwaiti teachers of these subjects are awaiting recruitment in these positions. "It is a general policy of nationalizing teaching staff members annually by 25 percent," he underlined, noting that computer teachers in intermediate and secondary stages would not be terminated.

"The terminated teachers knew of this procedure since last year, but the former minister ordered postponing the process till this year," Jowaisri added, noting that special cases of expat teachers like those having children studying in the final years of secondary stage or those from countries stricken with war like Syria and Yemen are still being considered by the undersecretary. Jowaisri stressed that the total numbers of terminated teachers is still being assessed. He added that changing the specialty from teaching computer science to mathematics was up to the supervision.

Notably, a large group of expatriate teachers were notified of the termination of their contracts in February. In addition, MoE had cut expatriate teachers' rent allowance from KD 150 to KD 90, which disturbed many of them and made some resign, while others sent their families back home because they couldn't afford the cost of living in Kuwait any more.

Four percent

In other news, official statistics showed that expats working in the public sector increased by four percent in 2016, ie by 3,900, to make the total number rise to around 100,000; a rate that is seen to be contrary to state plans to 'Kuwaitize' public posts. The statistics showed that despite the deficit and government plans, expat government employees increased by 3,900 in 2016 compared with only 1,250 in 2015 - a 212 percent increase. Other statistics showed that 20 percent of these expats hold undergraduate degrees, 38 percent of them are 'bachelors' and that their average monthly wages are KD 691, while Kuwaitis get an average of KD 1,470 - 113 percent higher than expats.

By A Saleh