Minister to approve 'special mixture' of asphalt to repair damaged roads

KUWAIT: Minister of Public Works and Minister of Housing Affairs Jenan Bushehri will approve the use of a special mixture of bitumen and modified polymer manufactured by local factories on recommendations made by a previous committee and the recent investigation committee to be used in repairing roads in April, well-informed sources at the Ministry of Public Works said. The sources added that the process to repair roads damaged by heavy rain will start with highways, King Fahad Expressway and the Sixth Ring Road, adding that the minister had ordered the formation of a special committee to follow up the process. The sources said this part of the plan will be in conjunction with repairing internal roads in various governorates after taking all the needed measures with regards to contracts that are still under process or those within guarantee periods.

Treatment abroad
Health Minister Dr Basel Al-Sabah said the total number of Kuwaitis receiving medical treatment abroad dropped in 2018 to 6,837 patients compared to 7,024 in 2017, 16,249 in 2016 and 16,819 in 2015. Responding to a parliamentary inquiry, he said the budget set for treatment overseas for the current fiscal year (April 2018-April 2019) is KD 308 million, including KD 120 million for the health offices in London and Washington and KD 40 million as health insurance for students abroad, which requires an additional KD 200 million budget to cover overdue bills of various hospitals and medical centers abroad from 2016-2017.

KD 8.9 million
The foreign ministry said revenues made from selling revenue stamps abroad during the fiscal year 2018-2019 were KD 8.9 million, including KD 6.6 million during the period of April-October 2018. Responding to a parliamentary inquiry about its commitment to the plans of automated connection between missions abroad and the finance ministry systems, the ministry stressed that the KD 1.39 million contract will be concluded during the fiscal year 2021-2022, adding that the project involves linking transactions made in 107 missions abroad with the ministry, improving employees' capability to handle over 3,500 documents daily in various missions worldwide, cutting losses resulting from delayed correspondence, achieving swift and fast dataflow, facilitating easy and immediate issue of audit reports and fast archiving.

Planting trees
Kuwait Municipality Director Ahmad Al-Manfouhi stressed the significance of regional and national parks and ecological tree perimeters. Responding to a proposal made by municipal council member Ahmed Hadyan about the project of planting trees in various desert areas in Kuwait, Manfouhi stressed that in collaboration with the Public Authority for Agricultural Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAAFR), the municipality has been working on providing places to plant trees as recommended in previous structural plans. Manfouhi also said that the proposal made to build a roundabout and a traffic light between blocks number 5 and 6 in Kaifan was rejected by the Interior Ministry, because the U-turns on that street are enough to achieve easy traffic flows.

Exempted employees
The Ministry of Education has set special regulations for employees exempted from punching in and out using biometric access control devices, on top of which is full commitment to official working hours, which will be documented at various centers. In this regard, educational sources explained that employees' bosses and those next in the chain of command will follow up employees' commitment. In other news, Kuwait's cultural office in Cairo said Kuwaiti students desiring to register in various Egyptian universities will have to submit endorsed study leaves from their workplaces, their original certificates and birth certificates, in addition to a recent endorsed passport copy.

Social allowances
The Civil Service Commission (CSC) issued a directive to various government bodies urging updating Kuwaiti employees' marital status data every six months so that the data can be used in processing the employees' social allowances.

By A Saleh