KUWAIT: High-ranking security sources said that MoI Undersecretary Lt Gen Suleiman Al-Fahd gave the ministry’s IT department the green light to impose a ban on around 12,000 citizens’ transactions with the ministry for not renewing their weapons’ licenses.

The sources explained that the ban would include renewing passports, driving licenses, registrations, bringing in domestic labor, renewing labor residencies and others. The sources explained that the new instructions would take effect by the beginning of 2016, especially when a report made by the weapons detectives director Maj Gen Farraj Al-Zobi showed that 12,000 arms licenses had been issued to citizens who neither renewed them nor handed over their weapons.

According to Zobi’s report, the owners of 10,000 shotguns, 10,000 guns and 1,000 machineguns had not renewed the licenses nor handed over their weapons to the weapons police, especially those who had machineguns that were only licensed in the 1990s for certain reasons that no longer wxisted and thus those weapons were no longer needed. Responding to a question if the ministry had to resort to bans and blocks which would delay citizens’ transactions, the sources stressed that the weapons issue was related to national security and stability and that decisive measures had to be taken against those who had not made use of the grace period granted to hand over weapons or renew licenses without accountability. Finally, the sources explained that once any of the concerned citizens renews or hands over weapons, the ban would be automatically lifted.

The sources added that MoI had consulted PACI to remove the names of those who passed away from the list. “However, their families will be contacted and asked to hand over the license of the weapons. They will sign an affidavit if they know nothing about the weapons,” said the sources. —Al-Anbaa