KUWAIT CITY, June 5: According to informed sources, there is a plan to increase the percentage of Kuwaiti employees from 25 percent to 50 percent in private companies, and from 30 percent to 60 percent in the private oil companies. They explained that a meeting was recently held by the private sector workers union and the Deputy Director General of National Workers Department at the Public Authority for Manpower (PAM) Najat Al-Yousef with the participation of the private oil companies union.

The meeting concluded with the suggestion to implement the aforementioned percentage of Kuwaitization in the concerned companies and to toughen the penalties against the violating companies by suspending or blocking the file of the relevant company and increasing the value of the fine by three times more than the current value. The sources revealed that this meeting was held because of the lack of commitment of many companies in the private sector to the rules as well as their mistreatment of Kuwaiti workers such as firing them for no reason.

Meanwhile, a recent statistics released by the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) revealed that the total number of Kuwaitis working in the private sector is 72,591 as of the end of 2023.

On the other hand, a statistics issued by the General Department of Migration in the Ministry of Interior revealed an increase in the number of residents with Article 18 visas in recent years. This indicates that the measures adopted for addressing the demographic issue are having an adverse effect. The statistics issued by the General Department of Migration recorded an increase of about 250,431 holders of Visa 18 from 1,248,435 at the end of 2021 to 1,500,776 as of the end of 2023. It also revealed that the number of domestic workers (holders of Article 20 visa) also increased by 194,718 from 591,368 in 2021 to 786,086 in 2023.