Government addresses demographic imbalances, plugs loopholes

After the country suffered over the past years from random employment and increasing chaos due to the visa trade and other violations, the government in 2023 paid great attention to addressing the issue of demographic imbalances and developing the labor market, especially after the Council of Ministers issued a decision to appoint the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior, Sheikh Talal Al-Khaled, to be in charge of this important file, which resulted in many regulatory and encouraging decisions, and contributed significantly to the activation of Law No. 74 of 2020 regarding regulating demographics.

Within the framework of accelerating the Kuwaitization plan, addressing demographic imbalances and achieving balance in them, in order to achieve social, economic and job security, and developing planning policies to modify the current composition Sheikh Talal Al-Khaled, who is also Chairman of the National Committee for Demographics and Labor Market Development, reports Al-Qabas daily.

To protect the Kuwaiti family from loose labor and commercial fraud, and to work to limit manipulation and combat visa traders who exploit workers in jobs other than their work, the “Electronic Worker ID” was launched through the My ID application, which contains the worker’s data and contributes to regulating the labor market.

In line with the worker’s smart identity, the “Kuwait Visa” application was launched, which contains an electronic entry visa for Kuwait (e-Visa), which aims to reduce forgery and tampering with entry visas, as well as securing and organizing the entry of workers into the country with the aim of ensuring fast and accurate electronic verification. before entering the country, in addition to protecting the society and limiting the entry of people with a criminal record, those wanted by the judiciary authorities, or those suffering from infectious diseases.

As for increasing the proportion of national workers in the private sector and creating attractive job opportunities for them, many decisions have been issued in this regard.

The first of these decisions is the Kuwaitization of cooperative society’s project to create 3,000 jobs for Kuwaiti youth, including 1,000 supervisory and senior job opportunities. This is in addition to 2,100 job opportunities in cooperative societies, with salaries and benefits that are encouraging and stimulating for national workers, it has witnessed a great demand for applications for these jobs.

The first phase of it has been launched and national workers in cooperative societies are employed in senior positions. The project aims to organize and develop cooperative work in various regions of Kuwait by providing jobs to people with special needs, due to the importance and vitality of this sector. Cooperative work also contributes to developing the administrative and technical skills of national workers and the sustainability and development of cooperative work with the aim of improving the services provided to citizens.

The steps to encourage national workers and develop the labor market did not stop there. Rather, decisions to enable national workers to work in the private sector continued by issuing regulations for the Kuwaitization of government contracts with the aim of creating attractive job opportunities for national workers in government contracts.

As for national labor support, last year, under the leadership of Sheikh Talal Al-Khaled, witnessed many amendments and additions to the file of the Public Authority for Manpower for the segment of those eligible for labor support, with the aim of encouraging work in the private sector, and reducing the tendency of workers to work in the government sector, which results in inflation in the first section of the budget, and the decisions were as follows:

• Adding workers in free and micro enterprises to those eligible for employment support.
• Continuity of labor support for the patient and the patient’s companions working in the private sector, similar to the government sector.
• Continuing the disbursement of labor support to those sent from the private sector to complete their studies or training, similar to the government sector.
• Granting Kuwaiti women working in the private sector a children’s allowance in the event that the husband does not receive the allowance, similar to the government sector.
• Granting employment support to employers holding an intermediate certificate or below (Chapter Five).
• Work experience in the government and private sectors is taken into account when disbursing labor support to workers in the private sector who hold an intermediate certificate or below.
• Adding citizens working in joint operations contracts in the divided region to the category of those eligible for labor support.

Decisions to encourage national employment include:

◄ Kuwaitization of government contracts and empowerment of national workers
◄ Approval of remote work in line with digital transformation
◄ Labor support for joint operations staff
◄ Employment support for patients and companions, and continued employment support for scholarship students

In addition to the above there are many projects in the implementation phase, including: “The National Labor Market Platform.”

It contains real-time labor market data with the aim of quickly studying and achieving alignment between educational outcomes and labor market needs and the ‘electronic lease contract’, which aims to automate lease contracts for the residential, investment and commercial sectors.

Moreover, earlier the students were banned from working in the private sector due to the executive regulations for the student reward decision, but the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior directed the Minister of Education and the Minister of Higher Education to amend the ministerial decision regarding the executive regulations for the student reward regarding allowing students to combine the student reward with work in the private sector, with the aim of encouraging students to invest their free time in a way that benefits them.