Lawmakers warns about increasing number of expat bachelors

Several lawmakers warned about the phenomenon of single expats living in Kuwait and opinioned that it might have disastrous consequences in the near future. According to reports published by Kuwait Times, citing Al Watan daily, parliamentarian Faisal Al- Duwaisan criticized the government for not taking any measures to control it. He said that expat laborers come to Kuwait without bringing their families along and inhabit in family residential areas. “Most bachelors live in ‘interior’ areas where most of the houses belong to heirs which most Kuwaiti families have abandoned, leaving the areas ‘taken over’ by bachelors and practice many illegal activities and commit violations,” another parliamentarian Nabil Al- Fadhl said, reports the daily.

“The reason behind the growing number of this ‘bachelor’ category of expats is the growing number of victims by visa traffickers. It is unacceptable to have around a million single expat laborers who have no steady addresses living amongst us and left to be victimized by some fatal diseases that do not only threaten them, but also threaten the whole society with Hepatitis C-type and AIDS,” said Dr Adel Bahbahani, noting that that the visa traffickers do not realize such threats. Bahbahani also added that the cost of living in Kuwait as well as the living conditions far exceeds most expats’ salaries. “This was another reason why many [expats] cannot afford to bring their families along to Kuwait,” he said.

Moreover, Bahbahani denied the connection between the increase of expatriate laborers in Kuwait, bachelors or singles, and the rise in crimes committed, local daily added. “According to a statistic about the last ten months of 2014, 70 percent of the crimes have been committed by Kuwaiti citizens,” he underlined, expressing his rejection to setting more restricting laws and imposing more unjustified fees on expats. “It is a mistake to view the increasing number of single expats as a threat to Kuwait because they do handle jobs which most Kuwaitis do not and thus, Kuwait needs them. Therefore, we have to contain and protect them as an asset to Kuwait,” daily reported.