KUWAIT: The same old problem of 'bachelors' residing in private residential areas was the main topic at a meeting recently held at the Khaitan mayor's office. It discussed a considerable number of complaints by families about renting houses to bachelors in Khaitan and Farwaniya, as figures show that 92,000 bachelors live in Khaitan and around half a million (447,918) live in Farwaniya.

Farwaniya Governor Sheikh Faisal Al-Humoud Al-Sabah stressed that the problem will not be resolved unless both governmental and public efforts are combined by framing a number of legislations and laws that will protect Kuwait's demography on one hand and bachelors' rights on the other.

Speaking after the meeting held at the Khaitan mayor's office, where he was represented by the governorate's coordination manager Saad Al-Hedebah, Sheikh Faisal said the governorate had started segmenting areas mostly inhabited by bachelors to find suitable solutions and evict them to other areas. "We started in Rabiya and are now working on Khaitan, then Firdous, Ishbeliya and so on," he said.

Sheikh Faisal stressed that companies and citizens who recruit these bachelors and bring them to work in Kuwait should be partners in resolving the problem by not housing them in private residential areas for security and social reasons. He also noted that special teams had been formed to inspect buildings suspected to be inhabited by bachelors in areas designated for families, as well as receive citizens' complaints in this regard.

Moreover, Sheikh Faisal said Farwaniya's population is around 1,169,312, of whom 447,918 are bachelors, including 20,130 females and 427,788 males. "This is almost half of the governorate's population," he remarked, calling for combining all possible efforts to resolve the problem by building labor cities to protect those bachelors' rights and the rights of private residential area inhabitants at the same time. - Al-Rai