The government’s Kuwaitization policy, of retrenching most expatriate workers in the public sector and replacing them with nationals within the next five years, is reportedly running into the brick wall of budget constraints.
In recent months the Civil Service Commission (CSC) is understood to have been inundated with letters from various public sector organizations expressing their inability to comply with the government’s Kuwaitization drive. Government establishments have said that it was difficult for them to remove expatriate workers and replace them with Kuwaitis on the same salary budgets that had been approved by the finance ministry.
They noted that most expatriates were usually hired for low consolidated salaries and were not a heavy burden on the salary budget. But replacing them with Kuwaitis would entail far higher salaries and perks that were simply not sustainable, especially in view of the government’s current policy of streamlining costs in public undertakings by reducing expenses and curtailing ministry budgets.
Moreover, many government organizations have complained that for many highly qualified jobs done previously by experienced expatriates there were no suitable Kuwaiti replacement available, and, for the jobs that Kuwaitis are qualified for, there were very few takers.
Experts had warned earlier that in a country with a demographic structure such as that of Kuwait, where expatriates form nearly 70 percent of the population, it is not feasible to remove nearly a million foreigners each year and replace them with nationals, as some have suggested. Obviously, it is far easier to stand up and holler, “let’s throw the expats out”, than to sit down and do the numbers. If someone did take the time and effort to do the latter, they would soon realize it was not realistic to implement the former.
Let us take a look at how the numbers add up. Latest statistics from the Central Statistical Bureau as on 30 June 2018, show 301,714 Kuwaitis and 99,343 expatriates were employed in the public sector. The only government entities that employed over a 1,000 foreigners were Kuwait Airways employing 5,571 foreigners (89% of the airline’s total workforce); Kuwait Flour Mills and Bakeries Company with 4,330 workers (96%); Kuwait Public Transportation Company with 2,721 expat workers (97%) and Kuwait University with 2,162 expatriates (31%). In addition to the combined oil sector companies employed 1,529 foreigners (7.5%).
Among the ministries, the only two with a large component of expatriates were Health with 34,920 non-Kuwaiti workers (57%) and Education with 29,776 foreign employees (26%). Additionally, Awqaf & Islamic Affairs employed 3,451 non-Kuwaitis (19%), Electricity and Water hired 1,310 foreign personnel (6%), Justice had 1,270 expats (12%) and Information employed 1,121 foreigners as staff (14%).
The figures show that following retrenchment of expatriates as demanded by lawmakers and citizens, there would be plenty of employment scope for Kuwaitis as pilots and hostesses, as well as in air and ground support roles with the national airline. Similarly, Kuwaiti teachers, doctors, nurses and other medical staff would also have employment chances once foreigners are thrown out. But the most number of vacancies that could come about from retrenching expatriates would be for bakers or drivers. Any takers?
Clearly, retrenching and deporting expats is not the answer to unemployment among nationals. True, there are large number of marginal and illegal workers in Kuwait who constitute a burden on the state and should legally be deported. But one also needs to examine how these workers arrived in Kuwait and ended up without the work specified in their work visas.
Two possibilities arise: Either the company that employed the expatriate worker has completed its contract and no longer desires their service, or has gone bankrupt and is unable to pay salaries. In this case, it is the company that should be held responsible for not repatriating the employee to the country of origin after paying all their dues.
The second scenario is that the marginalized or unemployed worker had no work in the first place, and came to the country on a visa sold by an agent, or bought one locally from a citizen or his representative. Last week it was reported that the ministry of interior had deported over 10,000 expatriates since the beginning of the year, Most of those deported were euphemistically labeled ‘residency law violators’. But, like it takes two to tango, the deportee alone cannot be blamed for the residency law violation.
Deportations are also not the answer to Kuwait’s skewed demographics, where three in four people are expatriates. Experts in political science and international relations will point out that a state economy that relies on a rentier model — in Kuwait’s case on rent from hydrocarbon revenues — will usually have a citizenry that is encumbered with a sense of entitlement.
The belief that the state will and should pay for all their needs from cradle to grave, lessens the desire among nationals for any hard or menial work. Sure in the knowledge that in any eventuality the state will take care of them and their families, citizens prefer jobs in managerial positions. Work down the ladder that is considered ‘unsuitable’ or ‘too arduous and technical’ for a citizen is passed on to expatriates who can be hired for paltry sums. That work attitude is where Kuwait’s demographic imbalance probably begins, and attempting to fix it with job quotas and deportations is not the solution.
However, this is not a problem endemic to Kuwait, much of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states suffer from this population imbalance and to a certain extent the sense . A recent report from the Pew Research Center shows that Kuwait came in second place globally in terms of people born abroad as a percentage of the population. The statistics show that 76 percent of Kuwait’s total population was born outside the country; this ratio is second only to the United Arab Emirates, where 88 percent of the population is born abroad.
Other countries in the GCC fare no better, Qatar came in third place with 65 percent of its population being foreigners, followed by Bahrain with 48 percent and Oman with 43 percent. In Saudi Arabia, the largest and most populated country in the GCC, expatriates form nearly a third of the total population of 34 million. Despite the ‘Nitaqat’ or Saudization program that has been rigorously implemented since 2017 and resulted in tens of thousands of expatriates leaving the country, an estimated 11 million foreigners still live and work in the Kingdom.
Work attitudes and sense of entitlement of citizens need to change or the region will continue to be reliant on foreign workers for a long time to come, or at least until oil revenues begin to dry out.
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