Kuwait Times
MP Mubarak Al-Hurais
KUWAIT: Chairman of the parliament’s legislative committee MP Mubarak Al-Hurais announced his intention to file a grilling motion soon against Minister of Commerce and Industry Yousuf Al-Ali, accusing him of failure to put the small and medium enterprises (SME) law into practice three years after it has been passed in parliament. Hurais added that the minister had been stalling and ignoring the law for over a year “while more than 90 applications were already made by young people who wish to start their own small businesses.”
Oil sector
MP Talal Al-Jallal expressed total rejection of imposing the strategic payroll alternative system on oil sector employees, reiterating this this particular sector’s importance as the sole source of national income. “Undermining the rights of those employees would have serious and dangerous consequences on state revenues,” he warned.
Jallal added that the project might be useful for other sectors, where employees might get more privileges as a result. “But oil employees will lose a lot under the new system,” he proclaimed, calling for exempting oil sector employees from the project so as not to lose national expertise in the field. He also rejected attempts to privatize the oil sector. Meanwhile, MP Madhi Al-Hajri warned the Deputy Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Acting Oil Minister Anas Al-Saleh of imposing the new system on oil sector employees because he would, then, follow on his colleague Abdullah Al-Tamimi’s footsteps and grill the minister.
Traffic fines
Traffic departments at Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are working on a project that automatically links traffic fines among them. The project is expected to be ready before the end of this year. The project aims at creating a system to collect traffic fines committed by GCC citizens and residents holding GCC driver’s licenses in any of the GCC member states. In this regard, informed sources said that automatic linkage between the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain has already been done, that linkage between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia is in the final stages and that 95 of the linkage between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain was done.
Companies to run schools
Minister of Education and Minister of Higher Education Dr Bader Al-Essa said that three local companies were qualified to run two schools in each governorate according to the build-operate-transfer (BOT) system. The minister explained that the companies would only run administrative works at the schools while the teaching staff would still be subject to the Ministry of Education.
By A Saleh
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