Kuwait’s national assembly approved the draft Expat quota bill on Sunday, which spells terror for the 8 lakh Indians who live there. The Bill, according to which Indians should not exceed 15 percent of the population, is to be transferred to the respective committee so that a comprehensive plan is created.
Significantly, out of Kuwait’s 4.3 million population, 3 million are expats. Indians are the largest expat community in Kuwait, coming up to an estimated 1.45 million.
The anti-expat rhetoric has spiked since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with lawmakers and government officials call for reducing the number of foreigners in Kuwait. This has come after the jobs have taken a massive hit due to the pandemic, after which the Kuwait government drafted this bill in an attempt to increase the job availability ratio for the natives of the country. According to a report, Kuwait Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah had recently proposed decreasing the number of expats living in the country from 70 percent to 30 per cent of the total population.
Meanwhile, the country’s COVID-19 cases are steadily rising, as the last recorded number of cases were 49,941, while the death toll has climbed to 368.