More than 83,500 expats left Kuwait in Q4 2020 – report

Up to 83,574 expatriates left Kuwait for good in the last quarter of 2020, according to local media reports.

The number of expats in the country’s workforce has now dropped to 1.5 million, reported Al-Qabas Arabic daily.

According to the report, several government entities have fired foreign nationals who were employed with them.

In the last three months of 2020, 2,144 contracts of expats in the government sector were terminated, it said.

Expat workers now account for roughly 29 per cent of the total workforce registered in the government sector, numbering 95,173.

Among them, 65 per cent are employed within the Health and Education ministries. Some of the other entities that continue to employ higher numbers of foreign nations include Kuwait Airways, Kuwait Flour Mills and Bakeries Company and Kuwait Public Transport Company.

The figures imply that Kuwait’s efforts to reduce the number of expat workers has seen some success “with deep-rooted changes in the population structure”, the report stated.

Work is also ongoing to bring about further changes in the population structure and increase the numbers of workers terminated from government entities, it added.

Last year, Kuwaiti MPs called to replace all expat jobs in the government within one year.