In its pursuit of what can be called “reducing its spending and slimming its administrative apparatus,” the government appears to be heading towards reducing public sector employment, through several theoretically homogeneous paths.
A local Arabic daily quoting reliable sources said while the government program looks to diversify employment opportunities for young people, the recent government initiatives in this regard appear to be serious to reduce the burden of employment on the government sector.
Three main data that this file witnessed during the last period suggested moving in that direction, starting with canceling the ‘benefits’ contained in the first chapter of the budget, and ending with the government’s tendency to raise the retirement age by 3 years to 58 years for males and 53 years for females, amid calls to create job opportunities for them in the private sector.
Initially, the Ministry of Finance took the approach of canceling the “supplementary appropriation” for Chapter One of the budget, by circulating the rules for preparing the 2022-2023 budget to government agencies and calling on them to adhere to the job grades determined by the government agency at the beginning of the fiscal year, while most of the agencies’ appointments were made through supplementary appropriation to provide additional grades, whenever ministries and government departments need to hire new employees, which means moving towards reducing the ability to increase the number of job opportunities in government agencies during the fiscal year.
In addition, the government focused, during its presentation of its work program the day before yesterday in the National Assembly, through the head of the Civil Service Commission, Maryam Al-Aqeel, on creating job opportunities for young people in the private sector, which indicates that the burden of employing education outputs will not be on the government alone.
At a time when the government’s work program is moving towards developing the administrative structure of government agencies, or what can be called slimming the administrative apparatus, which was announced by Al-Aqeel about the intention to abolish government agencies and merge others, with similar performance, will this be followed by reducing new government job opportunities by reducing the number of government agencies?
The repercussions of raising the retirement age for an additional three years through the amendments submitted to the Public Institute Social Security, the law seems to have a direct impact on reducing the ability to create greater job opportunities for newly graduated citizens.
Young employees under 35 years working in government sector make up about half of the workers, which means their working tenure until retirement will increase, and therefore no new placed will be available for new recruits, which in turn will reflect on the ability of government agencies to provide job opportunities to the new graduates.
Undoubtedly, relying on the government sector alone to employ most of the new graduates appears to be an unsustainable approach, which requires the involvement of the private sector to absorb a greater number of Kuwaitis, while ensuring the availability of incentives for young people to move towards a private job that may not provide job security as in the government sector.
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