SIX years ago the government established the Public Authority for Caring and Printing and Publication of the Holy Quran, Sunna and their Sciences.
Since everyone has several copies of the Holy Quran, and the Kuwaiti market is basically small, the distribution should have been diverted to foreign countries. However, many countries ban the entry of the Holy Quran including Saudi Arabia.In this regard, according to the report of the Budget Committee of the National Assembly, the final account of the authority, it has not printed a single Holy Quran since its establishment.The report also found that the expenditure of the authority for fiscal 2015/2016 was KD 3.246 million, and that similar money was spent over the previous years, while the authority had not achieved any of the goals the authority was formed for.The report showed the budget of the authority is witnessed superabundance in all sections except in terms of salaries, bonuses, conferences and external missions. The budget of this very item is a 100 percent rate. Furthermore, the salaries item increased by 330 percent and this might be considered as one of the achievements of the authority.Since there is a similar and much larger body in Saudi Arabia that carries out the same functions as this authority, there is no doubt that the diversion is the main reason behind the establishment of such an authority in Kuwait.Therefore, it must be covered by the austerity program and canceled because it is not needed especially after the former minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs Yaqoub Al-Sane’e had referred a number of the employees of the authority to the Public Prosecutor citing financial irregularities.This also can be said about the other non-functional entity that is called the Supreme Permanent Committee for Islamization of the Laws.Over the past quarter of a century of its establishment, and the disbursement hundreds of millions of dinars the committee has failed to write one line on any subject that it was assigned for. Or what it chose to entrust itself with, or provided for in its contract of establishment.The problem does not lie in the employees of that committee who have received their salaries every month for 25 years without doing any work. The problem indeed lies in the government that has remained silent before that extravagant expenditure of the public money.That committee would be needed for only one week in order to silence those who call for amending Article Two of the Kuwaiti Constitution. Since the voices of those who called for this amendment have faded why the gagging machine is still active?email: [email protected]By Ahmed Al-Sarraf
Ahmad Al-Sarraf
