“Employ us, support us, open the doors for us, and trust our capabilities.” This is the demand of the Kuwaiti youth, who aspire not only to realize the entire Kuwaitization plan on the ground, but to qualify them to take senior positions, and train them in professions that for a long time have been restricted to expatriates.
While the aspirations of the younger generation are increasing to reach the 100% replacement rate, this file is the center of attention, especially after the decision of Civil Service Commission to determine the rates of Kuwaitization in job groups in the ministries and government departments, while the period specified by the deadline to implement the decision is approaching five-years period to acquire Kuwaitization percentage, reports a local Arabic daily.
At the level of government ministries, the percentages of non-Kuwaiti workers in each ministry vary from one ministry to another, compared to the nature of work and the number of total employees.According to the latest available official statistics on labor market information issued by the Central Administration of Statistics for December 2021 the following percentages have been acquired.
According to the percentages, the highest percentage of non-Kuwaiti employees was the share of the Ministry of Health with 54.6% of non-Kuwaitis, and the Ministry of Education at 20%, but the increase in these percentages is due to the fact that the Kuwaiti decision did not include medical and health jobs as well as some specializations for teachers, due to the scarcity of teachers national cadres in these jobs.
In contrast to the Ministries of Health and Education, the lowest percentage of non-Kuwaiti employees was for the Ministry of Defense 0.8%, and the Ministry of Oil 0.9%.
The Ministry of Communications ranked third in terms of the lowest percentage of non-Kuwaiti employees at 1.5%, followed by Works by 1.8%, then commerce and industry by 2%, and in the sixth place, the Ministry of Finance came with 2.7%, followed by the interior by 2.8%.
In eighth position came the Ministry of Electricity and Water, with 3% of non-Kuwaiti employees from the total ministry employees, followed by the Ministry of Social Affairs with 3.2%, and in tenth place, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with 3.7%, then the Ministry of Higher Education with 7.3% of non-Kuwaiti employees of the total ministry employees.
Then the Ministry of Justice came in with 8%, then the media with 9.7%, and finally the endowments with the highest percentage of non-Kuwaiti employees at 10.6%.
Informed sources said that the percentages of non-Kuwaiti employees in government agencies are on the way to reduce more than the current rates, due to the measures taken in the Kuwaitization file, by asking the authorities to end the services of non-Kuwaiti employees in accordance with the decisions of the Civil Service Council, on the one hand, and not accepting any requests for appointment of employees non-Kuwaitis in jobs where national cadres are available on the other hand.
The sources indicated that the current percentages of non-Kuwaitis in the ministries are mostly for the employees of the service job group, which are jobs that are not attractive to national cadres on the one hand, in addition to the fact that the Kuwaitization percentage required in these jobs is considered the lowest compared to some other job groups, as the target Kuwaitization rate is 85% due to the nature of some of the tasks included under this group.
The sources concluded by saying that they hope that the ministries will soon achieve higher Kuwaitiization rates, by preparing national cadres to carry out most of the tasks of the functional groups.
