KUWAIT: Acting Director of the Manpower Public Authority Ahmed Al-Moussa stressed that fees collected by the authority's departments for various labor transactions were the least of their kind in GCC states and that increasing them is inevitable. Moussa explained that a vision on the fee increases had been already set pending discussion during the authority's next meeting to be presided by Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Al-Subaih. "Law number 6/2010 authorized the concerned minister to increase the fees and this does not need a special legislation," he underlined.

Responding to a question concerning the committee formed to review government projects' needs of labor, Moussa said that the committee had already finished its work and submitted its recommendations to Subaih for a final decision. "These recommendations make the authority a basic partner in the labor assessment process," he said, adding that the committee's recommendations aim at preventing the leak of government project laborers into local markets or the private sector, as this had been a major factor behind the demographical imbalance problems Kuwait is currently suffering.

Commenting on the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor's online transactions, Moussa said that these would help facilitate various transactions with a click of a button and that technical teams were currently working on updating and upgrading the authority's automated systems to provide the best services. Moreover, Moussa reassured everybody that workers due to arrive to execute government projects would not arrive all at once. "They will arrive in groups according to different phases and the group that finishes its phase tasks will leave and be replaced by the next one," he underscored. - Al-Jarida