KUWAIT CITY, April 24: MP Osama Al-Shaheen has submitted a proposal to cancel some requirements stated by Civil Services Commission (CSC) regarding Decree No. 81/2022 to amend Article 41 of the decree issued on April 4, 1979. The decree has been the subject of public and parliamentary calls for allowing public sector employees to convert their unused leave days to cash.

Al-Shaheen said the CSC specified two conditions for these employees to convert their unused leave days to cash -- excellent job performance rating and approval of the concerned undersecretary. He argued that these two conditions made the decree useless.

Meanwhile, MP Osama Al-Menawer has forwarded queries to Minister of Social Affairs and Societal Development and State Minister of Housing Welfare and Urban Development Mubarak Al-Arow about the decision to grant a housing plot in Khaitan to a citizen who applied for housing grant only two years ago. He said the Kuwait Anti-Corruption Authority (Nazaha) cancelled the ministerial decision on allocating the plot to the citizen as it was illegal. He also asked how many housing plots were allocated to citizens who were exempted from the waiting list.

MP Hamdan Al-Azmi asked all ministers about the following: number of committees and subsidiaries formed according CSC Resolution No. 1/1983 in the recent last five years, list of the members of every committee, if the committees meet regularly, term of every committee, their accomplishments, if they are subject to monitoring to ensure they carry out their tasks properly, if the committees are meeting after the official working hours, if the committees have a record of the minutes of their meetings, and budget allocated for each of these committees.

In another development, Chairman of parliamentary Environment Affairs Committee MP Hamad Al- Matar commented on what he considers misleading statements of Secretary General of Kuwait Liaison Committee for Environment Projects Naheel Abdulrazeq. He said the latter, with the support of some bloggers and media figures, has been trying to show that he is against her because she is a woman. He clarified the issues he raised include the administrative and financial violations committed by a public official regardless of the gender.

He added that Abdulrazeq tried to mislead the people by saying the committee is affiliated to the United Nations (UN) and not covered by Kuwaiti laws. He presented a letter from the Legal Advice and Legislation Department, affirming the committee is a Kuwaiti public entity under the Council of Ministers and covered by the Civil Service Law. He also cited reports of the State Audit Bureau (SAB), highlighting the grave financial and administrative violations.

He said Abdulrazeq signed a contract with a company to provide the committee with an expatriate engineer who received more than KD15,000 within a year; in addition to a monthly salary of KD1,269. He revealed this engineer is in charge of the maintenance of servers, asserting it is dangerous to allow expatriate workers to see and control the servers and data.

He asserted Dr Safaa Al-Zaman had earlier warned against appointing expatriates to such sensitive positions. He went on to say that in May 2021, Al-Abdulrazeq issued an administrative decision on granting herself and the Kuwaiti employees an incentive equal to their salaries for 24 months. He disclosed the salary of Al-Abdulrazeq is KD6,500; so her incentive was about KD150,000. He added the concerned minister was not aware of such a decision, which was taken during the Covid- 19 crisis; as well as the dismissal of 14 Kuwaiti employees under the guise of rationalizing expenditures. He then unveiled his plan to forward queries on the issue to the concerned minister after the Eid Al-Fitr holidays. By Saeed Mahmoud Saleh Arab Times Staff