KUWAIT CITY, 2 November 2003 — With more than 184,200 workers, Indians have become the largest foreign community employed by Kuwait’s private sector, the social affairs and labor minister said yesterday.
Egyptians come second with 183,000 workers while Bangladeshis total 116,000, Faisal Al-Hajji told Al-Qabas daily.
Al-Hajji said the total number of foreigners employed in the private sector reached 725,000 on June 30 this year, 52 percent from the Indian Subcontinent.
Other nationalities include 64,400 from Pakistan, 42,300 Syrians and 42,000 from Iran, in addition to 20,200 from the Philippines, 15,800 Lebanese, 11,000 from Sri Lanka and 10,500 Jordanians.
The figure does not include foreigners working in the public sector, estimated at 100,000 and some 300,000 domestic workers mostly from India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.
Nor does it include hundreds of thousands of family members accompanying their sponsors.
According to official figures released by the Planning Ministry, the foreign population of Kuwait rose 5.8 percent in 2002 to reach the 1.5 million mark for the first time in 12 years.
The report said that Kuwait’s total population at the end of last year reached 2.42 million — 37.1 percent Kuwaitis, 36.2 percent Asians and 22.2 percent Arabs.
New Weekend Proposed: A liberal lawmaker called on the government yesterday to change its weekend to Friday-Saturday for the benefit of the country’s business sector and its international relations.
MP Muhammad Al-Sager said in a statement the current weekend on Thursday-Friday is adversely affecting the business community and the economy and restricting its dealings with the outside world.
At present, the business and financial sector in Kuwait has only three days to deal with its customers and partners overseas because they shut on Thursday and Friday while foreign countries close on Saturday and Sunday.
