Manama: Around 42,000 foreigners staying illegally in Kuwaiti took advantage of a grace period either to legalise their status or to leave Kuwait without paying fines, an interior ministry official has said.
However, around 81,000 illegal residents have failed to use the four-month period to regularize their situation, Abdullah Al Rashed, acting Assistant Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior for Citizenship and Passports Affairs, said.
Major concern
According to the official, the grace period will not be extended beyond the June 30 deadline, even though the issue of illegal residents was a source of major concern for the ministry.
The ministry will next week launch large-scale campaigns to apprehend the remaining illegal residents on the grounds that their presence was a security and economic threat to the country, he said, Kuwaiti daily Al Watan reported on Monday.
Al Rashed said that those who will be arrested will remain in jail for a maximum period of 10 days.
Deportees will not be able to re-enter Kuwait thanks to the fingerprinting procedures and to the ministry's database, he said.
