DUBAI: The Kuwaiti government has drafted a law that will allow some foreign nationals to continue working in the country as it works to redress the balance of employment between expats and its own citizens.
Under the draft law domestic workers, GCC nationals, government contract workers as well as diplomats and relatives of Kuwaitis will all be exempt from the expat quota system, a panel report said.
The law - which aims to help rebalance Kuwait’s population - bans employers from hiring other nationalities once their numbers exceed the agreed quotas, local daily Kuwait Times reported.
Employers that exceed expat recruitment quotas in non-exempt lines of work face a jail term of up to 10 years and a fine of not more than $326,819.
The new proposal states that Indian nationals must not exceed 15 percent of the population. Sri Lankans, Filipinos and Egyptians must not account for more than 10 per cent each, while Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Nepalis and Vietnamese must not cross five percent each, it said.
Other nationalities cannot exceed three percent each, it added.
The draft law has been referred to Kuwait’s human resources development committee for consideration.
The committee said surplus expats will not be asked to leave the country after the law becomes effective. But recruitment from abroad will be stopped until the number of each industry meets the targets, it added.
Kuwait’s draft expat quota law will have exemptions
https://arab.news/czchu
Kuwait’s draft expat quota law will have exemptions
- Under the draft law domestic workers, GCC nationals, government contract workers as well as diplomats and relatives of Kuwaitis will all be exempt from the expat quota system
- The draft law has been referred to Kuwait’s human resources development committee for consideration
Assad forces injured 35 in 2016 chlorine attack: watchdog
- “There are reasonable grounds to believe that one Mi8/17 helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force dropped at least one yellow pressurised cylinder,” OPCW said
- The team interviewed dozens of witnesses, analyzed samples and reviewed satellite images
THE HAGUE: Former Syrian president Bashar Assad’s forces deployed chlorine gas in a 2016 attack that injured at least 35 people, the world’s chemical weapons watchdog concluded Thursday.
The October 2016 attack near a field hospital outside the town of Kafr Zeita, in western Syria, was already well-documented but the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for the first time accused Assad’s forces.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that one Mi8/17 helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force dropped at least one yellow pressurised cylinder,” the OPCW said in a report.
“Upon impact, the cylinder ruptured and released chlorine gas, which dispersed through the Wadi Al-Aanz valley, injuring 35 named individuals and affecting dozens more,” OPCW investigators concluded.
The team interviewed dozens of witnesses, analyzed samples and reviewed satellite images.
Assad was repeatedly accused of using chemical weapons during Syria’s 13-year civil war, and there has been widespread concern about the fate of Syria’s stocks since his 2024 ouster.
In a landmark speech last year, the foreign minister of the new Syrian government pledged to dismantle any remnants of Assad’s chemical weapons program.
The OPCW welcomed the “full and unfettered access” the new Syrian authorities granted their investigators.
It was the “first instance of cooperation by the Syrian Arab Republic with an... investigation,” the OPCW said.
The OPCW wants to establish a permanent presence in Syria to draw up an inventory of chemical weapons sites and start the destruction of the stockpiles.
