Cairo: Kuwait University, a state-run institution, has decided to suspend replacement of foreign workers with citizens for four years to cope with academic needs, local media reported.
The move runs counter to a 2017 decision made by the Civil Service Commission, Kuwait’s state employment agency, which sets quotas for employing citizens, a policy dubbed in the Gulf country as “Kuwaitisation”.
The university board’s decision to temporarily halt “Kuwaitisation” comes to the benefit of the educational process as the university plans to move to a new campus and after it has admitted a number of students exceeding the capacity of the old campus, a situation that requires employing a bigger staff, Al Qabas newspaper reported, citing official sources.
“The university has decided on the four-year delay because this is the expected timeframe for the graduation of the batch of students admitted for the current academic year,” they added.
The step is based on Kuwait's university law that gives the institution's board the powers of the Civil Service Commission in terms of academic and employment affairs.
The commission had earlier requested the university to terminate the service of 391 non-Kuwaiti employees among a total of 534 foreign workers to meet the Kuwaitisation quota set for the institution. Most of these employees do administrative jobs.
In recent months, there have been increasing calls in Kuwait for curbing foreigners’ employment amid accusations that migrant workers have strained the country’s infrastructure facilities amid economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
