‘Need to revise law’

KUWAIT CITY, March 18: MP Farz Al-Daihani has submitted a proposal to the parliamentary Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee to include the bills on general amnesty to the agenda of the upcoming session to be discussed and approved immediately after the deliberations on incoming letters. He confirmed that MPs Mubarak Al-Arow, Salman Al-Azmi, Musaed Al-Ardi, Fayez Al-Jomhour, Saleh Zeiab Al-Mutairi and Chairman of the Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee MP Khalid Ayed Al-Anzi support his proposal. Meanwhile, MP Marzouq Al- Khalifa forwarded queries to Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Ahmed Nasser Al-Muhammad on the loans that Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) granted to Arab and foreign countries.

He requested for the list of countries, amount of loan granted to each country, period of payment and amount of interest. He wants to know the due date for every loan, loans which were paid and those which have not been paid yet. MP Badr Nasser Al-Humaidi asked Minister of Finance and Minister of State for Economic and Investment Affairs Khalifa Hamada about the delayed enforcement of law number 6/2008 on the transformation of Kuwait Airways Corporation (KAC) into a shareholding company. He wants to know why the subsidiary of KAC was attributed to many institutions for 11 years and none of these institutions have taken any step towards enforcing the abovementioned law.

Decision
He asked about the loss resulting from the delayed enforcement of the law, reasons behind the issuance of a decision to transform KAC into a shareholding company within a period ranging from five to seven years, why the seven years period has ended without transforming KAC into a shareholding company, and expected date of implementing law number 6/2008. On the other hand, the Budgets and Final Accounts Committee recently discussed the budget of Kuwait University (KU) for fiscal 2021/2022 and final accounts for fiscals 2018/ 2019 and 2019/ 2020. Chairman of the committee MP Badr Al-Mullah disclosed the actual expenditure for fiscal 2018/2019 reached KD 566 million and KD 560 million for fiscal 2019 /2020.

He said the expenditure for fiscal 2021/2022 is estimated at KD 486 million, while attributing the expenditure reduction to minimizing construction projects due to the coronavirus crisis. The committee discussed the law on public universities, during which it recorded comments on the delayed issuance of the relevant executive decree despite the end of the sixmonth grace period for this purpose. He added the committee agreed on the need to revise the law in order to find solutions to the overlapping of authorities given to Kuwait University Council and the councils of each college, particularly in terms of appointing members of the teaching staff. The committee found out that the number of lecturers at KU decreased despite the need for more teaching staff for Sabah Al-Salem University City.

Performance
The committee also recorded comments on the poor performance of the Audit Office at KU that is refl ected in the big number of cases which the Financial Controllers Bureau (FCB) did not approve. The committee also suggested amending the comments which have been repeated for several years. The committee discussed the way of dealing with the revenues of consultative offices at KU. It was found out that the revenues are distributed to the consultants who provide consultations, instead of transferring the revenues to the Central Bank of Kuwait.

Al-Mullah disclosed that he was told this issue will be tackled once the new law is enforced. He added the committee also discussed the comments of the State Audit Bureau (SAB) on the objection of a subsidiary institution to hand over the revenues to Central Bank of Kuwait under the pretext that this violates the regulations of the institution. He affirmed that SAB recorded comments about the violations in opening bank accounts for some subsidiaries where revenues are kept instead of being handed over to the Central Bank of Kuwait.

By Saeed Mahmoud Saleh Arab Times Staff