After three years of enforcing restrictions, Kuwait is now considering easing the rules for expatriate workers above 60 years of age without university degree.

According to local media Al-Jarida Newspaper, the Public Authority for Manpower is reconsidering its decision on expatriates above 60 and without university as it affected the labour market adversely.

As per the existing rule, this category of people are required to spend around 1000 Dinar annually to keep up their residency, which includes insurance amount and other fees. This caused many specialised labourers to leave the country after 60 years as they are unable to pay the exorbitant financial cost involved. This affected the labour market as thousands of workers with decades of experience such as tailors, chef etc left the country resulting in scarcity of specialized professional and technical workers.

Recently the First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense, and Minister of Interior Sheikh Fahad Al-Yousef took several corrective measures to boost the labour market including the transfer of expatriate employees from government contracts to move to the private sector, allowing domestic workers to transfer to the private sector, etc which addressed the labour shortage.