A meeting held on Monday by the Board of Directors of the Public Authority of Manpower (PAM), under the chairmanship of the Minister of Justice and Minister of State for Integrity (Nazaha) Enhancement Jamal Al-Jalawi,has approved the renewal of work permits for expatriates aged 60 and over who do not hold a graduate degree or diploma.
The reported agreement reached at Monday’s meeting will allow non-graduate expats aged 60 and over to renew their work permits for an annual fee of KD250, in addition to paying for private health insurance. The decision will be reviewed at the end of a year.
The decision also exempts certain groups of people from having to pay the annual fees. Those exempted include children of Kuwaiti women, those born in Kuwait, and holders of Palestinian citizenship, who will only be obliged to pay the normal monetary value for the renewal of annual work permit, which is KD10 in addition to the annual health insurance fee of KD50.
The annual KD250 fee is considered a compromise and the best applicable option, given that the earlier fee, proposed by the same PAM director-board headed by former minister Dr. Abdullah Al-Salman, had proposed an amount of KD500 each year for renewing the work permit, in addition to an annual health insurance policy of around another KD500.
Monday’s decision will hopefully bring to a close the ongoing saga of work-permit renewals for non-graduate expats aged 60 and over. The issue has been brewing since January 2021, when PAM issued a decision that stopped the renewal of work permits for expatriates in this category.
Since then, thousands of expats who fall in this group have been undergoing untold mental anguish and financial woes, not to mention the many who were forced to leave the country when their visa expired and were not renewed under the onerous terms dictated by PAM earlier.
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