Kuwait: 8,000 expatriate children violating residency rules

Dubai: More than 8,000 expatriate children in Kuwait are now violating the residency rules because of the failure of their relatives to register them after birth, placing them in the category of unknown status, Al Rai daily reported, quoting informed security sources.

The Ministry of Interior renewed its demand for residency violators to amend their status and take advantage of the new deadline that began on December 1.

The sources said, “It has been discovered that there is a large number of expatriates with children who do not inform the Ministry of Interior of their status to complete the residency procedures for them. They were content with just obtaining the birth certificate in order to escape the payment of residency and health insurance fees, or because the father is a violator of the residency law. This makes the child a violator of the residency law and without data with the Ministry of Interior due to lack of electronic link with the Ministry of Health.”

Financial inability

They revealed that during the last period, about 8,000 children were discovered whose parents submitted requests to amend their legal status after five years of their birth. When asked about the reason for not doing this process throughout those years, they stated that the reason is their financial inability to obtain residency permits for their children, but when the children turn five, the parents are forced to amend their status in order to enrol them in schools.

Earlier, the Ministry of Interior developed a project to grant the guardian four months to complete the procedures of registering their newborn children. After that, a fine of KD 4 will be imposed for each day of delay. What contributed to the increase in the number of violators is that the financial fines on the violator do not exceed KD 600, even if the violation continues for several years. This is what made some resort to this behaviour.