KUWAIT CITY, Oct 17: MP Dawoud Marafie urged the Minister of Public Works Dr. Amani Buqamaz not to resign before facing the grilling motion, as several facts will be exposed to the citizens. He explained that the minister has been working on filling some positions which remained vacant for a long time. The process adopted by her is aimed at winning the loyalty of some MPs whose support she wants in the grilling motion. The cases of appointment of supervisory officials in violation include one related to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, which published a job advertisement and gave only three days of deadline to apply. When the violation was highlighted, another advertisement was published to change the deadline to ten days. The committee assigned to conduct the recruitment process consists of nine members but actually, there are only five. One member is counted as three because he occupies three different positions.

Another member is counted as two because he occupies two different positions. This means if only those two officials met, they will be counted as five, which means the quorum is available and then the decision they take for recruitment will be enforced. This process is considered as manipulation of the defined regulations aimed at achieving the desired conclusions, even if they are illegal. In another development, MP Hamad Al-Elyan, a member of the fact-finding committee formed by the National Assembly to investigate the corruption case of the Public Institution for Social Security during the term of the former chairman of the Board of Directors Fahad Al-Rajaan, disclosed that the committee will soon complete its report on the matter. He revealed that several meetings have been conducted with representatives of different relevant institutions including the State Audit Bureau (SAB) and the Fatwa and Legislation Department, in addition to senior officials from the Ministry of Justice as well as the whistleblower in the case Dr. Fahad Al-Rashed. Al-Elyan wondered why only two individuals have been convicted, one of whom has been released according to a special amnesty decree, despite the huge sums of money that were stolen and distributed to 12 different countries. He revealed that the committee discovered the confusion and lack of coordination among the relevant institutions. Al-Elyan stressed that there is no verified information about the death certificate of the former chairman of the Public Institution for Social Security Fahad Al-Rajaan who was announced dead in Europe. He said the investigation is aimed at finding all the involved individuals and verifying if pressure is being imposed by some parties to cover some suspicious officials. The lawmaker added that the committee will summon a number of former senior officials including former ministers of Finance to obtain all the necessary information.

Meanwhile, MP Fares Al-Otaibi asked the Minister of Education, Higher Education and Scientific Research Adel Al-Mane’e about the reasons behind suspending the master's degree program in the College of Law at Kuwait University, and why the university administration procrastinated in fulfilling the requests of the graduates who wish to complete their higher studies in Kuwait. He wanted to know when the master's degree programs in the College of Law will resume. Furthermore, MP Fahad Al-Masoud submitted parliamentary questions to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Oil Saad Al-Barrak, asking for copies of the two most recent strategies prepared by the Kuwait National Petroleum Corporation (KNPC), along with the bases and criteria prepared to implement the strategies, and the office assigned to implement the strategies.

By Saeed Mahmoud Saleh

Al-Seyassah/Arab Times Staff