KUWAIT: A specialized government team has prepared a new permanent approach for the new government following the National Assembly elections, expected to take place before the end of the year, following an announcement by His Highness the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah that the current Assembly will be constitutionally dissolved in the coming months, in the speech that was delivered by HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah last week.
High ranking sources said, "the preparation of a new approach by the government team is a new move that makes the government program permanent that does not change with the change of ministers; rather each ministry will be committed to implementing its program to fulfill a major reform plan that fights corruption and achieves transparency, remedies the structural, administrative and financial loopholes in each ministry and integrates official entities to eliminate bureaucracy."
The sources said the next government program is based on three main targets: Economic and financial reforms, slimming the government administrative system to reduce the number of government employees and send them to the private sector, and decisively remedying the population structure to make Kuwaitis 70 percent of the population and expats 30 percent.
Sources said the economic reforms include an increase in investment spending and reducing consumption. Among the reforms is to increase Kuwaitis' employment in the private sector and boost the percentage of Kuwaiti labor to more than 59 percent in some current sectors in which Kuwaitis do not make more up than 25 percent. Also, there will be a strong start of the Kuwaitization policy to reach a percentage of up to 70 percent like in some sectors like banks and communications. The first of these sectors is insurance, where Kuwaitis' presence does not match that of expats.
The sources said a law to appoint leaders and those in supervisory positions will be present in the government program, as there will not be an appointment of a supervisor without the presence of certain conditions and a certain period. They said the current state administrative system of the government is highly inflated and suffers from poor productivity.
They said remedying the population structure is now the worry of both the government and private sectors. The plan is to get rid of thousands of excess marginal laborers, while concentrating on only bringing in academically qualified workers after a joint decision by the Cabinet and Public Authority of Manpower (PAM).