Consultant to phrase tendering documents for railway project

MP Khalil Al-Saleh

KUWAIT: Head of the parliamentary employment committee Khalil Al-Saleh said the committee has set a plan to 'Kuwaitize' all public sector jobs by 2023 by replacing expatriate employees with Kuwaitis as well as reducing the number of expat employees in the private sector and keeping only those with actually needed specialties.

"We have already started putting the plan into practice and will not stop until we see Kuwaitis dominate all jobs," he added, urging various bodies responsible for employment - the Civil Service Commission, the Public Authority for Manpower, Kuwait Investment Authority and the General Secretariat of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development - to work on resolving the problem of unemployment. Saleh urged various ministries to cooperate with the ministry of education in resolving this problem through matching graduates' specialties with the needs of the local labor market. He also urged government bodies concerned with the plan to report to the parliament biannually.

Railway project

The Public Authority for Roads and Land Transport plans to appoint a consultant in the third quarter of this year to phrase all tendering documents needed for the railway project, said the authority's board member Saud Al-Hadbah, noting that the first phase of the railway project will run from the Saudi borders to downtown Kuwait City, and that the project will be executed according to public-private-partnership (PPP) conditions. Hadbah said the project's civil works will be given to the selected consortium including developers, contractors and financers. Notably, the first phase's estimated cost is around KD 900 million and is expected to be launched by 2023. The second 43-km long phase will run further to the north, reaching the Iraqi borders.

Shadadiya university

Minister of Commerce and Industry and Minister of State for Youth Affairs Khaled Al-Roudhan said it is expected to hand over the Shadadiya university project on Oct 15, 2018. He also stressed that the project's main contractor was responsible for the delay, not the industry authority, as a result of relocating the site to avoid obstructing the GCC railway route as well as the 18 months the Municipal Council took to approve the project's blueprints. Roudhan explained that the contractor had asked to extend the time needed to conclude all the project works till Oct 15, 2018.

Public projects

The government has adopted new measures to be taken to avoid delaying public projects under construction or planning, well-informed sources said. The sources added that the government urged all contractors to list the obstacles they face in executing their projects, suggest solutions and the set a schedule to overcome them and continue executing the projects. "Concerned companies are required to do so within a month to avoid being subjected to very strict legal measures," the source explained, noting that the expected penal measures include deducting a sum from the contract's value, in addition to more penalties in case of further delays.

By A Saleh