KUWAIT: The decision to replace expatriate workers with Kuwaiti nationals continued this year in many sectors with 10 sectors achieving a 100 percent Kuwaitization.

Government sources said that the replacement decision would be applied this year to replace expats with Kuwaitis as part of a plan developed by the government to address the imbalance in the demographics in order to reduce the number of non-Kuwaiti employees in government agencies annually. The sources added that requests by a number of government agencies to postpone the replacement have been rejected.

“Ten sectors will be totally Kuwaitized and expats will be replaced in jobs relating to information technology, marine, literature, media, arts, public relations, development, administrative follow-up, statistics and administrative support in all ministries, institutions and government agencies,” the sources added.

The sources pointed out that the government plan succeeded by a large percentage in a number of sectors, including teaching and education, where it aimed to Kuwaitize only 70 percent but it achieved 75 percent, and livestock, agricultural and aquaculture jobs by 75 percent which reached 79 percent, among other jobs. “This comes as part of the work of the Supreme Committee for Addressing Demographics, which aims to reach 70 percent of citizens and 30 percent of expatriates.”

“The total number of employees both Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis in the government sector is about 4,746,000 workers, representing approximately 10.3 percent of the total population while the percentage of Kuwaitis working in the government sector is about 76.0 percent after a 4-year hiatus due to COVID-19,” the sources added.