KUWAIT SACKS 2,000 EXPATRIATE TEACHERS AMID WORKER RULE CHANGES

Mon 27 March 2023:

The Kuwaiti Ministry of Education will lay off more than 2,000 expatriate teachers and department heads in 14 specialisations by the end of the current academic year 2022-2023, Kuwait’s Al-Qabas newspaper reported.

According to the paper, the teachers belong are from 24 nationalities, however, a majority of them – 82.09 per cent are Egyptians – followed by Syrians (11.03 per cent) and Jordanians (3.55 per cent).

They also include Indians, Nigerians, Iranians, Yemenis, Moroccans, Lebanese, Eritreans, Senegalese, Sudanese, Omani, Tunisians, Afghans, Canadians, Somalians, Italians, Kenyans, Russians, Filipinos, Ghanaians and Pakistanis.

The Ministry of Education had earlier announced that it was in the process of terminating the services of 1,815 male and female teachers and more than 200 expatriate department heads at the end of the current academic year.

This is part of a 2018 decree issued by Kuwait’s Civil Service Commission to replace expats in government jobs with Kuwaitis over the next five years.

Since then, authorities have rolled out a series of measures aimed at reducing foreign workers in the country. In 2020 Kuwait’s parliament said it wanted to reduce the number of Egyptians in the country to ten per cent and introduced a draft law to that effect.

In December last year the Kuwaiti government imposed new conditions on Egyptian workers wishing to travel to the Gulf State including a $100 entry fee, an increased work permit documentation fee and a medical examination.

Four months earlier Kuwait announced that it would lay off 250,000 Egyptian workers and suspend all contracts with non-nationals as 500,000 other Egyptians were already set to lose their jobs.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent