Court orders treatment for expat girl

KUWAIT: His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad Al-Sabah chairs the cabinet’s weekly session yesterday. —KUNA

KUWAIT: A study prepared by the research department at the Ministry of State for National Assembly Affairs about Kuwait' demography made 12 recommendations to solve the problem. They include determining the local market's actual need of expat laborers, holding visa traffickers and fake companies legally accountable, exerting more efforts in deporting marginal laborers, and lifting travel bans filed against people with expired residencies before deporting them. Furthermore, they include linking the outcome of education to actual local market needs, resolving the problem of illegal residents, increasing the percentage of national workers in the market, making further decisions to encourage Kuwaiti youth join technical colleges and institutes after finishing high school and limiting the exaggerated recruitment of domestic helpers. The recommendations also included encouraging more citizens to join the private sector, setting a timetable to stop hiring expats in the private sector and stopping transfers from government projects to the private sector.

Treatment costs

The comprehensive court yesterday passed a sentence compelling the Ministry of Health (MoH) to provide medical treatment to an expat girl who cannot afford the cost of a surgery. The court explained that the girl's case was a humane one regardless whether she can pay the fees or not. In other news, the constitutional court yesterday used a new name for people with special needs, describing them as 'disability challengers' in a sentence it passed cancelling an article in the law, and ordered paying equal allowances to 'disability challengers' belonging to the same family.

Charter

The educational affairs director at the Capital educational zone Laila Al-Shareef stressed finishing the preparation of the new primary stage charter. Shareef added that the educational zone also started providing enough teaching staff members to understaffed schools in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. Meanwhile, Islamic Studies supervisor Dr Jassem Al-Mesbah called for increasing the number of Quran lessons taught in the intermediate and secondary stages to two per week instead of only one, because the Holy Quran is one of the most important subjects students should learn.

Blacklisted companies

The Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) announced preparing blacklists of companies faltering in projects they were hired to execute for various MEW sectors and submit them to the Central Tenders Committee (CTC) so that they could be blacklisted and disqualified for further tenders. The ministry's announcement was made in response to inquiries made by the parliamentary budgets. MEW also stressed its keenness on studying each applying company's resume, credibility and previous projects.

Cities' projects

The Public Authority for Housing Welfare (PAHW) finished applying the final touches on preparations made to attract local and international investors in a special ceremony it intends to hold next week at a hotel to make a presentation about its experience in Jaber Al-Ahmad and Sabah Al-Ahmad cities.

New directors

Kuwait Petroleum International's (KPI) CEO Bakheet Al-Rashidi issued an administrative directive reshuffling two managing directors to company operation sites worldwide. The directive included appointing Azzam Al-Mutawa as the company's managing director in Italy and appointing the managing director for international operations Fadhel Faraj as managing director in northwestern Europe. In addition, it appointed Nasser bin Botain as director of the aviation fuel company and transferred Ayman Al-Qattan from Netherlands back to the headquarters in Kuwait to work as treasury and finance manager.

Violations

Head of the parliament's committee formed to investigate the Ministry of Health's (MoH) violations MP Saadoun Hammad said the committee members agreed to travel to the overseas health offices in Germany, Washington, Paris and London to investigate violations committed in the period of 2013-2017, before summoning the health minister and the Audit Bureau to discuss them. Hammad added that the committee would also investigate violations made in nursing contracts, the Afya retiree health insurance program, Adan Hospital and Audit Bureau reports. Meanwhile, MP Osama Al-Shaheen urged all investigation committee members to resign from the committee in case of any conflicts of interest.

KUNA's budget

The head of the parliament's budgets and final statements committee MP Adanan Abdulsamad said that the committee discussed KUNA's budget for 2017-2018 and its final statement for the fiscal year 2015-2016. Abdulsamad added that the committee found that KUNA had rejected appointing a Civil Service Commission (CSC) supervisor to monitor recruitment affairs. KUNA also exceeded the budget set by the finance ministry by rehiring 20 former retired employees at higher wages and more incentives. Abdulsamad said that the committee noticed some malfunctioning in funding KUNA's offices abroad through transferring funds to some employees personal bank accounts with the excuse that some countries do not allow opening bank accounts for the agency.

By A Saleh