Kuwait to Lay Off 400 Foreign Workers, Including Moroccans, from Public Works Ministry

It is up to Rana al-Fares, Minister of Public Works, also Minister of State for Housing, to sign the dismissal letters for the group of employees occupying administrative, legal and technical positions in various departments, reports the Kuwait Times newspaper.

"The initial plan was to gradually lay off expatriate employees, and the next batch was supposed to arrive by the end of the year... However, the minister decided not to wait and immediately terminate the contracts of expatriate employees," a source told Rai Daily.

The first wave of layoffs affected 150 expatriate employees. There are 550 of these expatriate employees working at the Ministry of Public Works and the Public Authority for Roads and Transportation. They represent 5% of the total staff of these two entities in a country where 70% of the population is made up of foreign expatriates.

This job elimination is part of a government policy to limit the number of foreign expatriate workers in Kuwait. In August, the Kuwaiti authorities had announced their intention to "thank" hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from the country.