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.
In June, the country announced that it will ban the employment of expatriates in state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) and its subsidiaries for the year 2020-21.
Read: Kuwait will not hire expats in the oil sector – minister
Kuwait’s Municipality also said in May that it would soon dismiss all expat employees and replace them with Kuwaitis.
The decision also called for freezing employment applications from expats, cancelling appointments under process and not renewing the contracts of existing employees.
Read: Kuwait’s Municipality to dismiss all expats, freeze the hiring of foreign nationals
