Kuwait extends grace period for illegal expats

Kuwait City: The Kuwait government on Thursday announced that the grace period for visa violators will be extended until March 2.

In a Tweet, the Ministry of Interior Thamer Al Ali Al Sabah said that the decision will go into effect from February 1 until March 2.

معالي وزير الداخلي
يصدر قرارا إنسانيا بمد مهلة تعديل أوضاع مخالفي الإقامة اعتباراً من 2021/2/1 وحتى 2021/3/2 pic.twitter.com/T4wrX7mNPC

— وزارة الداخلية (@Moi_kuw) January 27, 2021

The decision comes a few days before the scheduled grace period was supposed to end on January 31.

The grace period has been extended due to several factors from the closure of the Public Authority for Manpower (PAM) for two weeks to the disruption of flights due to lockdown measures around the world.

In another important development reported on January 24, Kuwait Minister of Trade and Commerce, Faisal Al Medlej, had revealed that the Civil Service Bureau has prepared a report to reduce the number of expats working in the public sector.

Read More: Kuwait introduces new hiring mechanism to reduce expats in public sector

Civil Service Bureau had prepared a technical report on the mechanism of staffing the government agencies in order to achieve Kuwaitization, a governmental policy aimed at creating a 100 per cent Kuwaiti workforce.

The report pointed out that several government agencies are required to reduce the number of expats and replace them with Kuwaitis annually.