Kuwait government workers protest over new fingerprint registration system

Safety inspectors at Kuwait’s Public Authority for Manpower are reportedly planning a protest over a new fingerprint scanning system to register attendance.

Kuwait Times reports that the sit-in follows a decision by the authority’s human resources manager, who refused to exempt inspectors from using the system.

Inspectors say the nature of their work means they are often out of the office and are forced to return at the end of their working day to register their exit from the workplace, according to the publication.

The sit-in is planned for outside the office of minister of social affairs and labour and minister of state for economic affairs, Hind Al-Sabeeh, on Tuesday.

The protests are not the first to take place in the Gulf over new punctuality systems introduced to increase low rates of attendance in some government departments.

In October, workers at Madinah Municipality in Saudi Arabia gathered in the building’s lobby to protest a new fingerprint system requiring them to register their attendance five times a day.

Madinah mayor Muhammad Al-Amri was later quoted as saying the new system increased attendance from 38 per cent to more than 50 per cent.

Read: New Saudi punctuality system increases staff attendance to 55.5%