The Minister of Health, Dr. Khaled Al-Saeed, accompanied by the Undersecretary of the Ministry, Dr. Mustafa Reda, visited the Labor Examination Center in Shuwaikh, to check on the progress of work, in the presence of the Director of the Public Health Department, Dr. Muhammad Al-Saeedan.
The sources indicated, the minister has introduced new regulatory procedures at the employment examination centers, including Shuwaikh, Sabhan, Jahra and Ali Sabah Al-Salem suburb for the benefit of the citizens and expatriates, reports a local Arabic daily.
The sources explained that it was decided to allocate the morning period from 7:30 am to 1 pm to receive domestic workers along with their Kuwaiti sponsors, while the centers will receive from 1 pm to 8 pm the rest of the expatriate workers. However, everyone who goes to these centers must have booked their appointments.
The ministry called on the visitors to come to the examination centers only on the dates specified by reservation, in order to prevent overcrowding smooth functioning of the centers.
In a related context, informed sources suggested to “Al-Rai” that next week will witness the beginning of a tangible breakthrough in the overcrowding of labor examination centers, through 5 steps that the Ministry of Health is working on in coordination with the state authorities.
The sources explained these steps include the implementation of the new regulatory procedures, the operation of a new center for labor examination in Mishref soon, the preparation of other centers, the raising of the capacity of the existing centers, and the use of support laboratories to raise the operational capacity of the centers to more than 220 percent compared to the period before the Corona pandemic.
The sources indicated that work is underway to open a new labor examination center in the fairgrounds, in coordination with the state authorities, which aims to receive about 500 to 700 cases per day, which means increasing the capacity of labor examination to range from 3,500 to 3,700 cases per day.
The sources explained that the rate of completion of daily transactions for labor examination currently is about 3,000 daily through 4 centers, compared to a capacity of about 1,600 cases before the outbreak of Corona pandemic, which means an increase in the current operational capacity to more than 180 percent in two periods.
She explained the following five steps are aimed at relieving pressure and completing transactions comfortably, especially with the doubling of the number of workers — starting the implementation of new regulatory procedures as of today, a new center in Mishref will be launched soon, working on preparing other centers, increasing the absorptive capacity of the existing centers and use of support laboratories in some hospitals.
This is in addition to five regulatory actions which include allocating the morning period to receive domestic workers in the presence of the sponsor, with prior reservation; allocating the evening shift to the rest of the workforce according to the pre-booking dates; increasing the operational capacity of the centers to more than 220 percent; reducing the period for showing laboratory results to only one week and liming to receive 4000 transactions per day.