KUWAIT: NO WORK PERMITS FOR EXPATS OVER AGE 60 WITH NO DEGREE

Thu 27 August 2020:

Last month, officials confirmed that residency permit holders outside of Kuwait, who were unable to renew their documents, would not be allowed to return unless they got new visas. Around 40,000 residency permits were not renewed.

Meanwhile Kuwait’s Public Manpower Authority has confirmed that it will stop issuing work permits for expats aged 60 years and above who do not hold a university degree, Kuwait Times reported.

This follows the news that Kuwait would stop issuing work permits for expats aged over 60 without a university degree, and will not extend any residencies and visas beyond August 31.

Work permits for over 60s without a university degree will no longer be issued from January 1, 2021 and applies to all those who hold a higher secondary certificate or lower, the report said.

On Sunday, Kuwait authorities issued a decision to ban the transfer of government workers to the private sector. Kuwaiti women’s husbands and children, wives of Kuwaitis, Palestinians with travel documents and those in specialized technical professions in the health field who are transferring to licensed facilities to provide medical services, such as doctors, nurses and others in the medical field are exempted from the decision.

The announcement comes after Kuwait’s government proposed a new plan earlier this month to ‘rebalance’ its population.

The plan could see as many as 360,000 expatriates deported in the “short-term” including 120,000 illegal workers, 150,000 expats aged over 60 as well as 90,000 ‘poorly-educated labourers’, according to media reports.

Longer-term, the plan proposes replacing tens of thousands of expat workers with locals, by adopting technology and tightening the recruitment regulations, officials said.

Expats currently account for roughly 70 per cent of Kuwait’s 4.8 million population.

However, the Gulf state would like expat numbers to reduce to 30 per cent of the country’s population, Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah said in June.

That would require cutting down the number of foreign workers by around 2.5 million.

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