The ongoing COVID-19 crisis along with the government’s Kuwaitization drive in public sector entities and limits on recruiting foreigners has led to a sharp fall in the number of expatriates in the one-year period between June 2019 and June this year.
The residency visas of at least 147,000 expats have expired, and tens of thousands have returned to their countries, according to official figures reported by a local daily. Moreover, the number of expats living in the country before the coronavirus crisis was determined to be 3.3 million, but has fallen to 2,650,000.
A daily said, quoting informed sources, that the total number of expats who have valid residency permits while outside the country is about 365,000, and those whose residency visas has expired is calculated to be about 147,000. After the departure of many and the expiry of residency visas of expatriates who were stranded in countries on a 34 country ban list, and unable to return, the number of those holding valid residence permits is 2.65 million.
According to statistics from the Public Authority for Manpower (PAM), approximately 81,000 expats left the labor market during the above period, including 37,000 domestic workers, and 43,000 from the labor market.
The largest decline of workers in the labor market was from the Indian community, with over 28,000 leaving, followed by the Egyptian community, from which more than 5,000 left, and then the Nepalese, with a drop of nearly 3,000. With regard to the domestic worker sector, around 35 percent who left belonged to the Indian community, followed by 11,000 from Bangladesh and nearly 5,000 each from the Sri Lankan, Ethiopian and Nepalese community.
In the meantime, the total number of expatriates employed as domestic workers reached 724,432.
The figures below show the number departures from the labor market: Indians 28,244; Egyptians 5,088; Nepalese 2,640; Filipinos 2588; Pakistanis 2,271; Iranians 474; and Syrians 418.
The number of domestic workers who left include: Indians 13,000; Bangladeshis 10,593; Sri Lankans 4,747; Ethiopians 4,531; Nepalese 4,786; Ivory Coast 1678; Filipinos 871; and Malagasy 870.
