Indians not to exceed 15%, Egyptians, Filipinos cap at 10%

KUWAIT CITY, July 4: The Legislative Committee said it approved during its meeting yesterday a proposed ‘quota’ for various nationalities as per the percentages specified in the proposal, reports Al-Seyassah daily.

The proposal calls for reducing the number of foreigners – Indians not exceeding 15 percent of the total number of Kuwaitis, while the number of Egyptians, Filipinos and Sri Lankans each not to exceed 10 percent of the Kuwaitis while the quota of the Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Pakistanis and Vietnamese is fixed at 3 percent respectively.

According to the same sources, the committee saw the compatibility of the proposal with the provisions of the Constitution, and also spoke of the statistics stating that the passage of the law during the current tenure of the Parliament and its implementation coincides with the Prime Minister’s desire to reduce the number of expatriates to just 30 percent of the Kuwaitis, which means in practice the need to dispense about three million foreign workers during the next 18 months.

This roughly works out to one million Indians, half a million Egyptians, 83 thousand Filipinos, 25 thousand Sri Lankans, since these three nationalities make the bulk of foreigners in the country. Meanwhile, the committee yesterday agreed by a majority vote to lift the immunity of the two MPs Saadoun Hammad and Salah Khorshid, in the case of Bangladeshi resident, who is also known as ‘Pablo’ and is a Member of Parliament in Bangladesh and allegedly owns a cleaning company in partnership with a Kuwaiti.