KUWAIT CITY, March 24, (KUNA): Director General of the Public Department for Immi-gration (PDI) Major General Kamal Al-Awadhi called on residence law violators to make use of the Amiri amnesty that was embodied through a ministerial decree on the rules of exiting expatriates who did not get residency permits or who have their residency permits ended.

The Amiri amnesty allows residency violators to modify their status or leave the country without paying any fines unless they are banned from travel due to lawsuits.

The remark was made by Maj Gen Al-Awadhi to KUNA following a meeting held with the consuls, councilers,
labor attaches from the embassies of Egypt, Syria, Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Eritrea.

The meeting was held at the Consulate Department headquarters at the Foreign Ministry in the presence of the department’s head Tala Al-Falah.

Al-Awadhi said that the Amiri lenient decree upon which the decision of Deputy Prime Minister, and Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Humoud Al-Jaber Al-Sabah on February 24 was based regarding the rules of exiting expatriates who did not get permits for residency or whose residency permits ended, came on the occasion of celebrating the 50th independence anniversary of Kuwait.

He added that this ministerial decree contains two articles, the first stipulates that the residency violator must modify his or her status through paying a given fine which should not exceed in all cases KD 600 along with exempting him or her from legal actions in relation to reference to court.

As for the second article, it stipulates that the residency violator must leave the country within a grace period that started March 1 and continues till June 30 without paying any fines unless he or she is banned from travel due to lawsuits whether criminal or civil ones which are filed against him or her.

Those who are entitled to the Amiri lenient decree can return to Kuwait following their departure but with a new entry visa and residency permit, reassuring those who want to return that they can do this after having a new visa, he added.

Al-Awadhi also said, “those violators can make use of such Amiri lenient decree through leaving the country immediately via any exits, and without asking the permission of the Public Department for Immigration (PDI) by only showing a valid passport and an air ticket at the airport.

As for the violator who does not have a passport, he should resort to the embassy of his or her country in Kuwait to have a passport, then go to PDI to take his or her fingerprints in order to check that he is not wanted by the law enforcement agencies, and that data mentioned in his or her passports corresponds to data at PDI.
He also pointed out that PDI takes the fingerprints of any residence violator who does not have a passport or civil identity card with the aim of comparing such fingerprints to those taken by the criminal department to check the authenticity of the violator’s data.

Finally, he said that there are four cases to which the current Amiri lenient decree is applied; the first is related to fleeing domestic workers with the local sponsor’s reporting them to the authorities, then comes those who were arrested at the command of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor due to working at fictitious firms, and labor who do not have a local sponsor due to long years passing after their violation or the closure of the companies they were working at, and those were arrested due to residence violation as well as those who were born in Kuwait, but did not have a residency permit here.

He said the number of beneficiaries from this Amiri amnesty decree on modifying the conditions of residence violators hit nearly 10,000 including 6, 500 who already rectified their status following paying fines, then proceeded to get new residence permits without leaving the country, while there are 3500 Expatriates who already left the country.

Finally, Al-Awadhi said that Kuwait Airways reduced — in line with the Amiri decree — the prices of air tickets for residency violators to help them leave the country, noting that the national carrier will open a new office at PDI at Al-Farwaniyah governorate.