Soon enough, all European capitals and cities will be full of GCC citizens and families who annually flock there during the summer to enjoy the greenery and fine weather. The same old negative images will recur: GCC families wandering around or shopping while dragging an Asian or African maid behind carrying children and shopping bags while the GCC 'princess' leads the way without even looking behind at her own children.

To be honest, the phenomenon of travelling on touristic trips accompanied by maids does not exist amongst other GCC families, like Saudis, Emiratis, Qataris, etc. It is a distinctive trait of Kuwaiti tourists in Europe who will fight with European embassies to have visas issued for domestic laborers accompanying Kuwaiti families. Those embassies have been too soft on issuing such visas with the result that various problems may happen including deserting the family and breaking the visa to stay in Europe or causing legal disputes that may have bad consequences on the head of the family.

Kuwaiti women's addiction to housemaids is phenomenally becoming a bad social lesion. The sad thing is that you may find a young Kuwaiti woman taking her maid to Europe who won't serve her own husband and kids for a few weeks on the summer vacation while, at the same time, one sees Japanese, American and Australian tourists in their seventies or eighties accompanying their families on trips and gladly serving them.

There are other negative images of Kuwaiti families on flights. One will see a Kuwaiti mother in the front seat watching a movie while her kids are wrestling with the maid behind without even attracting her attention to look behind. A European lady once interfered on seeing a Kuwaiti family walking in an airport with a maid following them carrying a baby, some bags and dragging a trolley bag at the same time. The lady criticized the family noting that what the maid was doing was unbearable for human beings.

Scenes of Kuwaitis' maids in Europe have become terrible images portraying the Kuwaiti society because of a few lazy men and women who are the outcome of the age of oil and wealth that nobody made an effort to make. Therefore, the government must interfere and urge European embassies to limit the number of visas issued for domestic laborers accompanying Kuwaiti families to Europe, and make them restricted to those accompanying people with special needs.--Translated by Kuwait Times from Al-Jarida

By Abdulmohsen Jum'a