800,000 Indians may be forced to leave as Kuwait approves expat bill

A total of 0.8 million Indians could be forced to leave Kuwait as the country's National Assembly committee has approved a draft expat quota bill seeking to reduce the number of foreign workers in the Gulf country.

The National Assembly’s legal and legislative committee has determined that the expat quota bill is constitutional.

According to the bill, Indians should not exceed 15% of the Kuwait's total population. This could result in 8,00,000 Indians leaving Kuwait, as the Indian community constitutes the largest expat community in the country, totalling as 1.45 million, The Hindu reported.

The current population of Kuwait is 4.3 million, with Kuwaitis making up 1.3 million of the population, and expats accounting for 3 million.

It was proposed by Kuwait’s Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah last month to reduce the number of expats from 70% to 30% of the population.

Amid a slump in oil prices and the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a spike in anti-expat rhetoric as lawmakers and government officials call for reducing the number of foreigners in Kuwait.

Assembly Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanem 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 Kuwait.

Terming population structure as a real problem, the speaker said 70 % of the population constitutes of expats, adding that what is more serious is that 1.3 million of the 3.35 million expats “are either illiterate or can merely read and write”, the people Kuwait does not really need, the Kuwait Times reported.

“I understand that we recruit doctors and skilled manpower and not unskilled labourers. This is an indication that there is a distortion. Visa traders have contributed to increasing this figure, Mr Ghanem said.

According to the Indian embassy in Kuwait, there are about 28,000 Indians working for the Kuwaiti Government in various jobs like nurses, engineers in national oil companies and a few as scientists,

The story was originally published in The Hindu.