Manama: Around 8 lakh Indians may be forced to leave Kuwait if a draft expat quota bill is enacted into law, which aims to reduce the country's sizeable expat community by 40 percent. Kuwait Parliament’s legal and legislative committee has approved the draft bill, according to which Indians should not exceed 15% of the population.
The bill has been deemed constitutional and forwarded to the respective committee to create a comprehensive plan to legalise the quota system, according to reports. Afterward, it will be forwarded to the cabinet for approval and will be endorsed as law.
It is unclear when the law will come into effect, but reports indicate that the Kuwaiti parliament aims to have the legislation ready by October this year, prior to the elections that are slated for November 2020. The term of the current Parliament ends in October.
Kuwait's overall population currently stands at 42.71 lakh. Over 70 per cent or 33.35 lakh of the total population are expats, which means Kuwaiti nationals constitute just 30 percent of the total population.
The Indian community constitutes the largest expat community in Kuwait, totalling 14.5 lakhs. Of this, about 4.5 lakh are Keralites.
The new draft law proposes similar quotas for other nationalities. Other large expat communities in Kuwait who may be affected include people from Egypt, Pakistan and the Philippines.
Last month, Kuwait's Prime minister Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah proposed reducing the expat population to 30 percent from the current estimated 70 percent.
The latest decision comes amid the coronavirus pandemic and a slump in oil prices.
Kuwait to amend residency law to cut expat numbers
Meanwhile, two more draft bills will be tabled in the parliament in the coming weeks to reduce the expat population, according to reports.
Speaking to state-run Kuwait Television, Interior Minister Anas Al-Saleh said that his ministry will submit a draft bill in the parliament proposing changes to the residency law within the next two weeks.
The proposed draft law aims to encourage only those expats that are needed to stay in the country, the minister said. The statement is a clear reference to the intention to cut expat numbers.
Parliament Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanem also told Kuwait TV that he and a group of lawmakers will submit to the Assembly a comprehensive draft law calling for a gradual reduction of expats in the country.
Referring to the expat quota bill, Ghanem said it is difficult at this stage to impose quotas with specific percentages for different nationalities. The proposed bill will help Kuwait focus on recruiting skilled labourers instead of some 13 lakh workers who are either illiterate or can merely read and write, he added. The draft law will also impose a limit on the number of expats that businesses can recruit each year, including their specialization and other details, he said.
The need to set quotas for expat to resolve population imbalances in Kuwait is more than a decade old. But, there has been a spike in this anti-expat rhetoric since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic as MP’s and officials call for reducing the number of expats in Kuwait.
A major source of remittance
Kuwait is a top source of remittances for India. In 2018, India received nearly USD 480 crore from Kuwait as remittances.
According to the Indian embassy in Kuwait, about 28,000 Indians are working for the Kuwaiti Government in various professions like nurses, engineers in national oil companies and a few as scientists. The majority of Indians (5.23 Lakh) are deployed in private sectors.
There are about 1.16 lakh dependents, as well. Out of these, there are about 60,000 Indian students studying in 23 Indian schools across the country.
