Kuwaiti Lawmaker Accuses Government Of Importing Unnecessary Expats

Controversial Kuwaiti politician Safa al Hashem’s latest soapbox centres on the government’s so-called importation of expatriates to fill local admin jobs.

Well-known in Kuwait for her anti-expat stance, Al Hashem can be relied upon for speechifying on just about every aspect of the employment of foreigners anywhere in the emirate. Her latest rant accuses the emirate’s leaders of deliberately ‘importing’ expatriates to fill government positions rather than giving the jobs to Kuwaiti nationals. The move, she says, has caused an even more horrifying demographic imbalance between the huge numbers of expats in the emirate versus the high unemployment rates of local people, thus preventing Kuwaitis from exercising their legitimate rights to work.

Whether the feisty female lawmaker is famous or infamous for her attacks on Kuwait’s expat community, she certainly makes her point at very regular intervals. On this occasion, she’s demanding full details of all expat appointees in all sectors from 2017 to the present day, including their nationalities, names, wages, education levels, places of employment and reasons for their appointment as against that of a Kuwaiti national. In addition, she wants details of the numbers of locals who applied for the same jobs.

Never one to miss a chance to score a point, she’s also demanding information about special payments of Kd 1,500 monthly made in 2014 to a Canadian dean of a pharmaceutical college, claiming Kuwaitis in the same job were never paid these amounts. In addition, she’s claiming the Dean’s wife was also given a job at the same educational institution, even although she was unable to meet the requirements for the position. Whether al Hashem ever gets what she demands isn’t obvious to expat readers of local media, but the lawmaker is truly in line with the recently-elected generation of politicians worldwide.