KUWAIT CITY — A high-level parliamentary committee in Kuwait is currently studying as many as seven bills seeking to reduce the number of expatriates in a bid to address what it calls "demographic imbalance" in the country. According to the chairman of the parliamentary Human Resources Committee MP Khalil Al-Saleh, the committee recently discussed the demographic imbalance, domestic labor and visa trading issues with Minister of Social Affairs and State Minister for Economic Affairs Mariam Al-Aqeel and her accompanying team, Arab Times, an English-language daily, reported on Monday. The minister and her team presented solutions to the abovementioned issues during the meeting. He said the plan adopted by the minister requires special legislation since it is aimed at addressing the growing security concerns as a result of a massive gap in the number of expatriates compared to the citizens. He revealed the remedy to the demographic imbalance focuses on the importance of finding solutions to the problem, particularly the exceptionally big number of expatriates of certain nationalities. He added the committee asked the minister to present a timetable for the implementation of the plan, specify the needed legislation, and submit related reports to the parliament for approval. He affirmed the committee looked into a number of relevant bills submitted by several lawmakers, pointing out that these bills are being discussed and the reports on these bills will be released by the end of this week. Also, the committee rapporteur, MP Osama Al-Shaheen, said that the Ministry of Social Affairs presented short and long term solutions, revealing the ministry laid down a plan to terminate the services of 360,000 expatriate workers. Stressing the importance of finding solutions to this issue, Al-Shaheen asserted the number of citizens increased by 55 percent within 15 years from 2005 to 2020 while the number of expatriates increased by 100 percent during the same period.
