The National Assembly’s legal and legislative have deemed the draft expat quota bill as constitutional. The National Assembly of Kuwait has approved the bill due to which 8 Lakh Indians could be forced to leave Kuwait. The bill on ground levels wants to decrease the number of foreign workers in Kuwait. The country has a population of 4.3 out of which only 1.3 would be Kuwaitis and rest are expats.
As the bill proposes that the total number of Indian populations should not exceed more than 15%. The total number of Indians working in the gulf country accounts to 1.4 million. A mere 15% would mean half of them to be retrieved. The bill is also applicable to other countries such as Egypt forming the second largest expatriate population after India.
The tensions in Kuwait’s National Assembly grew a month back when PM Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah announced the expatriate population to be reduced from 70% to 30%. The growing insecurities of Kuwait as a majority nation of expats can be due to peak slump in oil prices in midst of a pandemic. Majority of Covid 19 cases are due to foreigners.
Assembly Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanem said that the draft bill is further scrutinised and a gradual decrease of expats from the country should follow while imposing a cap on the number of expats present.
The state of Affairs of Indians in Kuwait
It would be fair to say that the majority of Indians working in Kuwait are skilled and well to do. India received 4.8 billion dollars from Kuwait as remittances in the year 2018 which makes Kuwait the top source of remittance.
According to the Indian embassy in Kuwait, the majority (5.23 lakh) are working in the private sector. A small fraction of people around 28,000 Indians work with the government as nurses, engineers, national oil companies and a few scientists. There are about 1.16 lakh dependants out of which 60,000 are studying in 23 Indian schools.
