Cairo: Kuwait’s ministers of health, interior and higher education have been urged to help university lecturers stuck abroad due to travel restrictions, to return to the country to do their job.
Last month, Kuwait announced a ban on flights from 32 countries due to health concerns over the COVID-19 spread.
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Head of the Kuwait University Faculty Association Ebrahim Al Hamud said that teaching staffers stuck abroad are not to blame for their dilemma.
“This is due to a compulsory situation represented in the closure of airports and preventing movement to stop the spread of the new coronavirus,” he said in media remarks.
Al Hamud described the lecturers stranded abroad as victims unable to return to Kuwait to do their job.
He called for exempting them from legal obligations stated in their job contracts including being absent from work.
According to education regulations, the teaching staff member has to be present in Kuwait to do his job. “Such obligations are impossible to fulfil in real and legal terms,” he said, referring to the compulsory absence of the lecturers.
“I ask the ministers of health, interior and higher education to intervene to allow the teaching staff members to enter the country and return to the university,” Al Hamud said, suggesting the stranded lecturers be deemed on paid compulsory leave. Kuwait has not said how many university teachers are still unable to return to the country due to the virus-related travel curbs.
