Kuwait Times

Published Date: July 31, 2008
By A Saleh, Staff writer

KUWAIT: The Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor has continued summoning cleaning company heads to speedily resolve discussions on cleaning workers complaints after the strikes were suspended. A ministry official said that workers from 20 companies were involved in the strike action, with over 150 workplaces being affected by the strikes, including hospitals, health centers and other state facilities, as well as Cooperative Societies and private sector companies.

The official explained that the social affairs ministry is currently negotiating wage rises for the workers with the companies involved, as well as insisting on back payment of their unpaid salaries and improvements to their miserable living conditions, in order to avoid future recurrences of the recent protests.

The ministry is completely serious about taking strict steps against the companies that fail to comply with new decisions, the official emphasized. He added that the ministry is insisting on receiving official undertakings from the cleaning companies' management to pay the backdated salaries in full; if these are not paid, the ministry will deduct KD 250 per worker from the company's bank account.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Interior has begun interviewing the large number of Bangladeshi labors arrested during rioting in different areas of Kuwait in order to discover the identities of the riots' organizers. A security official revealed that preliminary interviews of the Bangladeshi laborers indicate that Kuwaiti citizens, Egyptian expatriates and Bangladeshi community leaders were amongst those involve in organizing the riots, which lasted for three days.

The official added that over 1,000 Bangladeshis were involved in the rioting. Some of these individuals are being interviewed by state security officers, whilst others have been deported back to Bangladesh. The official added that the Ministry of Interior, in coordination with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, has formed security teams which have the right to detain any Bangladeshi expatriate found to be working for anyone other than his sponsor.

In another development, the Ministry of Interior on Tuesday deported the first group of Bangladeshi laborers, numbering 350 in all, who participated in the riots in different areas of Kuwait. The laborers were supposed to be deported at 3 am on Tuesday on a jet chartered by the government from the UAE's Al Etihad Airlines for the purpose after the ministry received strict instruction from an unnamed high-ranking government official, who was quoted as saying, "I don't want them to sleep tonight in Kuwait.
For reasons beyond the Interior Ministry's control, however, the flight was postponed until 5 pm that day.

Some of the laborers protested against their deportation and their relatives who were at the airport demanded that they be detained in Kuwait instead, but the Interior Ministry said that it would deport anyone who believed they could mock the country's state security system. The first group deported is to be followed by other groups in the coming few days.