KUWAIT: Kuwaiti oil workers will go ahead with a strike starting on Sunday, their union head said, rejecting an offer from the state oil company to suspend the implementation of public sector pay reforms.
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) and its subsidiaries agreed to temporarily freeze a planned government overhaul of the payroll system and seek a compromise through a joint committee with the workers union, said the spokesman for Kuwait’s oil sector, Sheikh Talal Al-Khaled Al-Sabah.
The union head, Saif Al-Qahtani, called that “playing with words.”
“The KPC statement is talking about ‘freezing’ the decisions, while our demand is to cancel them,” Qahtani, head of the Oil and Petrochemical Industries Workers Confederation, told Reuters. “The strike is still on and on time.”
The union has not said how long the strike, involving thousands of workers at state-owned oil, gas and petrochemical companies, would last. Workers fear the payroll overhaul would reduce salaries and affect other benefits.
Kuwait National Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of KPC and one of five state-owned companies that would be affected, has said there is a contingency strategy to ensure production and exports would not be affected.
KPC called on the unions to work with it to find a way out of the dispute, and warned that under Kuwaiti laws it was illegal to obstruct work in public facilities in areas such as oil, gas and petrochemicals.
“There is no doubt that the commotion contains a direct and major threat to the stability of the oil sector which represents the main economic artery for the country’s revenues and is the source of its wealth and prosperity,” the statement said. It said that anyone inciting a work stoppage risked “subjecting himself to legal questioning.” The KPC reviewed “maximum” contingency plans in the face of the crisis. Its board of directors discussed “alternative plans and precautionary measures” at all its affiliate companies.
Kuwait oil workers reject compromise; strike set
Kuwait oil workers reject compromise; strike set
Western Libya forces kill notorious migrant smuggler, security agency says
- The Security Threats Combating Agency raided the group’s hideout in response to the attack and killed its leader, Ahmed Al-Dabbashi
- Dabbashi had been under US sanctions since 2018
BENGHAZI: Western Libyan security forces said on Friday they had killed a notorious migrant smuggler in the coastal city of Sabratha after “criminal gangs” affiliated with him attacked one of their checkpoints overnight.
The Security Threats Combating Agency, a security agency under western Libya’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah, said they raided the group’s hideout in response to the attack and killed its leader, Ahmed Al-Dabbashi, also known as “Al-Amu.”
Dabbashi’s brother was arrested and six members of the force were wounded in the fighting, the agency said in the statement on its Facebook page.
Dabbashi had been under US sanctions since 2018. Washington described him as the “leader of one of two powerful migrant smuggling organizations” based in Sabratha and said he had “used his organization to rob and enslave migrants before allowing them to leave for Italy.”
Human trafficking is rife in Libya, which has been divided between rival armed factions since a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
The proliferation of smuggling gangs and the absence of a strong central authority have made the country one of the main staging points for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.
Dbeibah was installed through a UN-backed process in 2021, but significant parts of western Libya remain outside his control. Dbeibah’s Government of National Unity, or GNU, is not recognized by rival authorities in the east.
An armed alliance affiliated with an earlier UN-backed government in Tripoli – the Government of National Accord – had taken on Dabbashi’s forces in a three-week battle in 2017 that killed and wounded dozens and damaged residential areas and Sabratha’s Roman ruins.
