Kuwait Times

Published Date: May 30, 2007
By B Izzak, Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The National Assembly yesterday passed a recommendation calling on the government to delay the application of the weekend switch from Thursday to Saturday until "careful studies" were made on its consequences. Many MPs criticised the law on "religious and social grounds", with a number of them warning of a traffic problem on Saturdays as all employees will be off on that day.

The government on Sunday decided to switch the weekend from Thursday-Friday to Friday-Saturday starting from September 1, even as a number of Islamist MPs vented anger on the decision, some saying it was an act of "imitating Jews". MPs called on the government in the recommendation to study the religious aspects of the decision before implementing it.

The Assembly meanwhile passed a law allowing the government to naturalize up to 2,000 people this year, which is similar to laws passed in the past to speed up naturalizing bedoons, or stateless Arabs. The new law however does not specifically target bedoons, but is open to other categories provided the number does not exceed 2,000 until the end of 2007. It includes foreigners who have made great service to the country, people who fought in the Kuwaiti army and widows and women divorced by Kuwaiti husbands.

The government, which voted in favour of the law, said it will work out guidelines for the application of the law. In the past, several thousand bedoons were granted citizenship under such laws which are valid in the same year they are issued. Bedoons currently number around 100,000 people, down from 132,000 after the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991. About 20,000 of them have taken up other nationalities or produced their original identities. More than 10,000 have been naturalised.

In one of the most productive sessions in months, the Assembly passed in principle an amendment to the penal code that bans people from imitating the other sex in public and stipulates up to one year in jail and a maximum of KD 1,000 for violators. They also passed a new law that stipulates stiff penalties for those who misuse new telecom technology, especially Bluetooth for "immoral matters".

One article stipulates a jail term of up to two years and a fine of KD 2,000 for those who use mobile phones or other means to take pictures of others illegally, especially those who take "immoral pictures". The penalty is increased to three years in jail and KD 5,000 fine for people who send such pictures through Bluetooth or other means. The jail term is raised to up to five years and a fine of KD 5,000 if the said pictures were used for blackmail.