By B Izzak
KUWAIT: The National Assembly on Wednesday amended its internal charter to allow committees to discuss draft laws directly without going through the legal and legislative committee in a bid to accelerate approving legislation. Under the existing system, all draft laws must go through the Assembly’s legal and legislative committee to ensure that bills and proposals are in line with the constitution and other laws.
After clearing them, the legal committee then sends those bills to the concerned committee to discuss them before sending them back to the Assembly with reports explaining its opinions. The process led to the accumulation of hundreds of bills and proposals before the legal committee, which impeded other committees from discussing crucial legislation and delayed their approval.
MP Muhannad Al-Sayer said the legal committee received 600 bills and issues in the previous Assembly and only completed 87 of them, highlighting the need to speed up the process of approving laws. Fifty-four MPs voted for the law while only one MP voted against. The Assembly then began debating the Amiri Address delivered by HH the Crown Prince Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah on the opening day of the Assembly.
Ashour said bedoons are in deep pain and asked if the government has any mercy towards them, adding "should we wait for solutions imposed from abroad?” He said bedoons are deprived of schooling and employment. Bedoon engineers, doctors and teachers are employed only at minimum salaries, asking if the government has any enmity with bedoons.
The lawmaker said bedoons have served Kuwait for long years in the oil sector and in the army and some were martyred. Ashour’s call came amid a campaign launched by Kuwait Lawyers Association and activists against a government body handling the affairs of the bedoons, which is accused of oppressing them. The activists are calling for abolishing the agency.
MP Jenan Bushehri welcomed the government’s move to strengthen transparency by submitting legislation to govern conflict of interests, but charged that some Cabinet members are suspected of violating the provisions of the draft law. She said when she was a minister, she had suspended a number of companies because of the damage to roads resulting from rain, adding that some of these companies were reallowed to operate and demanded that the entire issue be investigated.
Meanwhile, the government has notified MPs it is preparing a memo regarding procedures to manage demographics in Kuwait. It assured lawmakers that it will be a principal factor in the government’s program, which will be presented to the National Assembly over the next two weeks. The memo will be sent to the Assembly next month to be a roadmap for cooperation between the two branches to reduce expats to 30 percent of the population. According to the memo, this percentage can be achieved in five years.
"The legislative and executive branches agree that reaching this goal quickly is not possible, but the Assembly asked the government to start procedures on the matter as soon as possible,” sources added. This will include the suspension of issuing work permits for some professions and suspension of bringing workers from some countries.