KUWAIT: Kuwait Municipality strongly denied any plans to accept expatriates' transactions only on Tuesdays, said informed sources. Some bloggers have published a fake copy of an alleged decision issued by the municipality to announce this, the sources noted. The municipality also stressed that employees responsible for making and circulating such fake directives would be held accountable because it would never discriminate between citizens' and expats' transactions.

Mubarakiya market

Chairman of the Capital committee in the Municipal Council Hassan Kamal yesterday accompanied the committee's rapporteur Ali Al-Mousa, the council's secretary general Yousif Al-Sogobi and the municipality's deputy director Yousif Al-Menawer on a tour of Mubarakiya market, where they reviewed possible means to develop the Mubarakiya market area and add new services to the site to make it a touristic, economic and recreational attraction.

In this regard, Kamal said that the location was so vital and that a security checkpoint would be added to the new amenities to be built there because the area is being visited by all citizens, expats and visitors, as it is a highly significant and historic one. "Street name signs will be used in both Arabic and English in the surrounding area," he added, noting that electric golf carts would be also provided for elderly people within the market.

Moussa stressed that the area was a major tourist attraction because of its unique design and historic significance. He added that new parking areas would be added and that the market's entries and exits would be developed.

Amendments

Municipal Council member and head of Hawally committee Yousif Al-Ghareeb demanded reconsidering the amendments the Cabinet recently approved to municipal law number 5/2005 because some of those amendments had been done without enough studies. Ghareeb gave examples of amendments that had been hastily made by the penalties imposed on committing construction-related violations, holding owners legally responsible for them without referring to official bodies that had allowed them in the first place, and increasing the number of municipal council members.

Too many topics

Chairman of the municipal council's legal and financial committee Mane Al-Ajmi said that most of the topics in a recent meeting agenda had been postponed because they were too many to discuss. Ajmi added that a letter from the fatwa and legislation department concerning regulations of building telecom towers was discussed and that the council's secretariat general had been asked to rephrase the regulations chart before making the final decision on the committee's next meeting. "The regulations include conditioning building those towers at least 12-20 meters away from private residences," he said.

By Meshaal Al-Enezi