MP Ashour warns of outside solution to Bedouns crisis

KUWAIT: The National Assembly's financial and economic affairs committee will study the issue of price rises and inflation among a host of issues and draft laws the panel aims to complete in the summer, head of the committee said. MP Salah Khorshid said a report will be prepared on inflation rates and the price rises especially in food and consuming goods based on a decision by the assembly to study the causes of such increases.

The committee will also study the controversial issue of interest rates on loans taken by retired people from the Public Institution For Social Security which led to the grilling of the finance minister that resulted in a failed no-confidence vote.

Khorshid said issues raised by MPs Riyadh Al-Adasani and Bader Al-Mulla during their grilling of the finance minister last month. The panel will review proposed amendments to the expropriation law which was enacted more than 50 years ago and did not undergo any changes.
The committee will study a draft law regulating insolvency which stipulates allowing debtors to secure temporary funding through services, commodities or loans before getting approval to restructure a company under the threat of bankruptcy, said Khorshid, adding that the bill regulates the affairs of companies facing financial difficulties.
The lawmaker said that the panel may also discuss a draft law for setting up the Silk City and northern economic zone if the government sends it to the assembly. The bill aims at regulating the establishment of border residential cities and consolidate economic, development and security issues in the northern parts of the country and eventually help diversify sources of income away from oil.

In the meantime, MP Saleh Ashour yesterday warned the government of the risk of a solution from outside the country for the decades-old problem of bedoons or stateless people if the government does not resolve the problem as soon as possible.

The lawmaker held the interior minister responsible for the suicide of a young bedoon man a few days ago reportedly after the central bedoons agency refused to renew his security ID as part of pressure on bedoons to reveal their alleged real nationality. The suicide highlighted the plight in which some 120,000 bedoons are facing, especially with regards to basic human rights including decent jobs.

MP Ashour said the interior minister can decide to grant bedoons their humanitarian and social rights based on international conventions, adding that failure to resolve their problem for over a half century will only tarnish the country's reputation.