Representatives of 15 public institutions and ministries attended a meeting supervised by the parliamentary Human Resources Development Committee on Wednesday to present their views on the Demographic Imbalance Bill, says Rapporteur MP Osama Al-Shaheen, reported a local daily
Minister of Social Affairs and State Minister for Economic Affairs Mariam Al-Aqeel, Minister of Commerce and Industry Khaled Al-Roudhan, and Minister of Public Works Rana Al-Fares were among the attendees of the meeting. Al-Shaheen said the committee is eager to listen to the opinions of different public institutions, especially after the government voted against the bill in its first reading.
Confirming that several MPs submitted their recommendations to the committee, Al-Shaheen urged all concerned parties and other MPs to provide their comments and suggestions before the upcoming committee’s meeting on Monday to finalize the report on the bill. He also asked the National Assembly Office to include the bill in the agenda of the session slated for Tuesday or earlier.
The meeting comes after the government had expressed its objection – when discussing the first deliberation – on some articles in the law. The daily said, quoting parliamentary sources that the government’s position on the demographics law came as a surprise, especially “after the government had expressed its agreement to the law in the committee’s meetings, which was characterized by flexibility and objectivity, and it left the government to determine the quotas of the expat communities based on market needs. Yet it returned in the last session and objected to some articles of the law, and preferred not to vote on it in two deliberations, and it was sent back to the committee to make some amendments.”
The sources told Al-Rai daily that “The government prefers the issue should not be the responsibility of a specific minister, especially since the issue is complex and its responsibility cannot be limited to a specific minister or one ministry because the demographic issue is under the jurisdiction of several ministries, the most important of which are affairs, the interior and foreign affairs.”
The sources pointed out that “the government, which showed flexibility in the meetings of the Resource Development Committee, and stressed in the last session the need not to restrict the government to time frames such as allotting 6 months to announce a government plan to address the demographic issue or end the entire problem within 5 years, because the government considers the issue as complex and multifaceted, and effects many important sectors, and it is not easy to dispense with all expats within a short period. Any imbalance may affect the needs of the labor market, which might cause economic pitfalls.”
The government pointed out in August that between 2005 and 2019, the population of Kuwait increased by double, reaching 4.42 million. Although Kuwaiti citizens increased by 55 per cent during that period, the number of expats grew by 130 per cent, increasing from 1.33 million in 2005 to 3.08 million in 2019.
The topic of demographic imbalance has gained momentum recently, as the governmental officials and MPs call on shifting the imbalance as Kuwait undergoes economic difficulties from the coronavirus pandemic.
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