The Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Interior and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Anas Al-Saleh is steadfast in fulfilling his ‘three-phase’ plan and his promise to get rid of visa traders and residency visa violators who are still living in the country, reports Al-Seyassah.
He emphasized that the first phase ended successfully with the departure of about 26,400 illegal expats who left the country without paying fines under the amnesty. The daily reports, quoting a source, that the second stage will begin after life in the country returns to normal completely as announced by the Council of Ministers, and includes “granting a new one-month deadline for residency violators to surrender voluntarily and leave the country without paying fines”.
There are still more than 90,000 residence law violators and the Interior Ministry expects a large number of them to benefit from the second amnesty to leave the country, especially due to the huge effect the coronavirus pandemic has had on the economic and financial situation of many citizens and expats. The third and final stage of the plan will start immediately after the end of the ‘second’ phase which will include a careful count of the nationalities and numbers of the remaining residency violators, their whereabouts and the organization of extensive security campaigns to pursue them, reports the daily.
The source added, the Minister of the Interior Anas Al-Saleh, has asked the concerned senior official to prepare lists of the violators who have not taken advantage of the amnesty and to pursue their sponsors. He explained this stage will start before the end of the year and aims at removing more than 50 percent of the violators by blocking the names and transactions of sponsors. He stressed that at the conclusion of the three stages of the plan, transferring a violator from one company to another will be strictly forbidden and the offender will have to leave the country permanently.
The permanent committee formed to implement the national strategy to prevent human trafficking and smuggling of migrants is currently preparing a full response to the annual report issued by the US State Department Office of Monitoring and Combating Trafficking in Persons (OMCTP), which accused Kuwait of not meeting the minimum standards of eliminating this phenomenon, reports Al-Jarida quoting knowledgeable sources.
According to sources at the Public Authority for Manpower (PAM), the committee that includes in its membership representatives from most of the relevant ministries, authorities, and government institutions, such as the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Interior, in addition to PAM, are coordinating with each other to refute the allegations and the inaccuracies contained in the report.
The committee stressed the response will focus on highlighting the strenuous efforts made by the state to confront this abhorrent crime of human trafficking, and to get rid of fake companies that have flooded the market with marginal and excessive workers. The efforts so far have resulted in the referral of dozens of companies that are suspected of visa trading to the Public Prosecution or the General Department of Investigations at the Ministry of Interior; their files have been blacklisted and some workers have been arrested for violating the residency visa law.
Moreover, even some senior officials of PAM suspected of corruption have been referred to the Prosecution and suspended from work until the investigations are completed. They were suspended after their names emerged during interrogations in the case related to expat workers. Regarding protection of expat workers, PAM spares no efforts to provide all forms of protection in the private and domestic sectors, as well as to those registered with government contracting companies, reports the daily.
PAM’s emergency and crisis management team has started the process of paying all financial dues for employees under contracts of troubled companies, and is also supervising the travel of expats interested in returning to their home countries after ensuring they have received their full employee entitlements.
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