KUWAIT: Kuwait Municipality Director Ahmed Al-Manfouhi speaks during the press conference. — Photo by Yasser Al-Zayyat

KUWAIT: Kuwait Municipality Director Ahmed Al-Manfouhi stressed that the municipality will lay off 'managers' who do not do their jobs according to laws and regulations. He made his statements during a press conference yesterday to launch and follow up the municipality's plans on facilitating the procedures of issuing advertisement licenses, health licenses and health certificates.

Responding to a question about removing camps on the conclusion of the camping season, Manfouhi said that citizens who do not remove their camps will not be refunded the deposit paid to license the camp. Commenting on the controversy about allowing barbequing in public places, Manfouhi said that the topic was still subject for discussion with the Environment Public Authority (EPA) and Public Authority for Agricultural Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAAFR). Manfouhi said that the municipality had signed a partnership agreement with the World Bank with the aim of developing it. "We need to administratively revolutionize the municipality and reduce paperwork and shift to online transactions," he underlined, noting that the municipality would stop accepting paper and manual transactions soon.

Dangerous situations

MP Yousef Al-Zalzalah stressed that in view of specialized economists' confirmations about the Kuwaiti currency's purchasing power and likelihood that it would fall, this will lead to dangerous economic situations unless the government made a package of economic and financial decisions. "We are facing two bitter choices - either to reject the government's proposed electricity consumption tariffs, which will cause the Kuwaiti dinar to lose much of its value and prices to jump by 20 percent, or to pass the proposal and overburden citizens," he said.

Speaking to visitors at his diwaniya, Zalzalah stressed that the proposed electricity prices were more than twice compared to the current ones and said that the government had been warned by IMF that unless it made financial and economic decisions, it would have to reduce the Kuwaiti currency's purchasing power. He added that the speaker of the house had recently met IMF and told them about the proposed new electricity prices and that the project was still being discussed. "We are number one worldwide in electricity and water consumption and this means that something is wrong," he underlined, calling for making wealthy people living in palaces who leave lights on around the clock to pay the new prices. He also called for holding government bodies accountable for wasteful consumption rates, not overburdening citizens with limited and medium incomes and not to impose 'indirect' taxes on them in the form of electricity bills. Commenting on the issue of discovering people with fake Kuwaiti citizenships, Zalzalah said the problem started long ago after the liberation when the Interior Ministry had non-trustworthy data entry employees who were behind forging those citizenships. He added that the real number of 'fake' citizens was much more than the number of 3,100 declared by the Interior Ministry.

By Meshaal Al-Enezi