GOK ENACTS POSITIVE CHANGE TO FLAWED WORKER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KUWAIT 000788 SIPDIS NEA/ARP E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/14/2018 TAGS: PGOV PHUM SOCI KWMN KTIP SMIG KU SUBJECT: GOK ENACTS POSITIVE CHANGE TO FLAWED WORKER SPONSORSHIP SYSTEM AND CONSIDERS EVEN BOLDER STEPS THAT COULD HELP ADDRESS TIP CONCERNS REF: 09KUWAIT761 Classified By: CDA Tom Williams for reasons 1.4 b and d ¶1. (C) Summary. The GOK has made several recent moves towards reforming its flawed foreign worker sponsorship system: -- On August 9, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MOSAL) issued a Ministerial resolution ) not subject to Parliamentary approval ) to immediately permit most foreign workers to change employers after three years of work, without first having to secure the permission of the current Kuwaiti sponsor. -- One week earlier, on August 2, MOSAL Minister Al-Afasi publicly proposed the complete abolition of the GOK's current sponsorship system for foreign workers as a way of combating trafficking in persons. -- Separately, Minister Al-Afasi told the press that Kuwait had strongly backed the proposal at the June 8 meeting of GCC foreign ministers to exempt Yemenis from any sponsorship requirements, and expressed the view he hoped this policy would be adopted soon. End summary. -------------- --- MOSAL resolution allows foreign workers greater freedom of movement -------------- --- ¶2. (SBU) On August 9, Kuwait's MOSAL issued a ministerial resolution which immediately granted any foreign worker who has been with the same employer for three years the right to change jobs without the requirement to first secure the current employer or sponsor's permission (which was often withheld or granted only after payment of some form of agreed compensation to the sponsor). The resolution, not subject to Parliamentary approval, has received a largely favorable response in the local press. The decision does not apply to domestic servants (about 500,000 workers) because they are not covered by the labor law, nor does it apply to government contracts, where Decree Number 135 of 2001 requires five years before any foreign worker can make such a change. -------------- -------------- GOK talks up possibility of abolishing the sponsorship system -------------- -------------- ¶3. (U) August has seen a flurry of GOK statements on abolishing the sponsorship system. On August 2, local Arabic daily Al-Rai quoted MOSAL Minister Dr. Mohammad Al-Afasi as saying that he was considering abolishing Kuwait's sponsorship system for foreign workers because he felt that black market visa trading blemishes Kuwait's international image. On August 3, Al-Afasi made another statement -- quoted by Arabic daily Al-Watan -- that he had decided to abolish the sponsorship system in order to combat trafficking in persons. On August 6, Al-Rai quoted the Ministry of Interior as saying that it was planning to change Kuwait's foreign workers residency law to allow for more workers to sponsor themselves -- a necessary step in abolishing the current sponsorship system, under which all non-GCC workers must be sponsored by a Kuwaiti. -------------- --- GOK-backed GCC proposal may exempt Yemenis from sponsorship requirements -------------- --- ¶4. (SBU) At a June 8 meeting of GCC foreign ministers, the GOK and other member countries proposed to give Yemeni workers priority in employment and exempt them from sponsorship. If this proposal is eventually enacted, Yemenis would be the first group of non-GCC workers to have such an exemption, as all other foreign workers in Kuwait currently require sponsors. Enacting the proposal would require the establishment of an entirely new GOK mechanism for regulating KUWAIT 00000788 002 OF 003 foreign workers. Yemenis account for only about 5,000 of Kuwait's 1.7 million foreign workers. (Note: Most were expelled after Sana'a supported Saddam's 1990 invasion. End note.) In proposing to import more Yemeni workers, the GOK likely had three main motivations: a desire for more foreign workers who share Kuwait's Arab and Muslim heritage, a desire to help stabilize Yemen, and a desire to decrease the population of Bangladeshi and other TCN manual laborers. (Note: Since 5,000 Bangladeshi workers protested against poor labor conditions in Kuwait in July 2008, the GOK has been wary of its 200,000 Bangladeshis and has curtailed new sponsorships for workers from that country. End note.) -------------- --- Kuwait's sponsorship system: the law -------------- --- ¶5. (SBU) For any Kuwaiti to use the services of any non-GCC workers, said workers must be under the Kuwaiti's sponsorship. The GOK's MOSAL grants Kuwaiti companies seeking foreign labor the right to issue a limited number of residency visas based on the particular company's labor needs (as evaluated by MOSAL). By regulation, residency visas are supposed to be issued to the foreign workers for free. The various types of residency visas are regulated by different legal articles: worker visas by article 18, domestic worker visas by article 20, and visas for dependents by article 22. -------------- --- Kuwait's sponsorship system: the flaws -------------- --- ¶6. (SBU) In Kuwait's sponsorship system, there are four main parties: the GOK, the Kuwaiti sponsor (which can be an individual or a company),the recruiting agent, and the foreign worker. (Note: Kuwaiti companies have recruiting agents based India, Egypt, Syria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, and the other major labor-sending countries. End note.) Some unscrupulous Kuwaiti sponsors and recruiting agents make money by selling the residency visas -- which foreign workers are supposed to obtain for free -- for 500 to 1,500 Kuwaiti dinars (USD 1,700 to 5,200). Sometimes, these sold residency visas are also useless for the foreign worker because the job which the visa is issued for exists only on paper and is not connected to a real job back in Kuwait. These fraudulent visa sales are a high-profile issue in Kuwait: on July 29, local Arabic daily Al-Qabas ran a front-page story that the Attorney General had ordered the arrest of a Kuwaiti citizen accused of forging over 50,000 residency visas registered under 137 phony companies. Though the number of victims of these fraudulent sales is unknown, some foreign workers submit themselves to this fraudulent process in hopes that they will eventually find employment. ¶7. (SBU) Once the foreign workers arrive in Kuwait, some find that they have little control in their relationship with their sponsor under Kuwait's current sponsorship system, due ease with which sponsors may have their employees deported. Some sponsors exploit the one-sided nature of this employer-employee relationship by confiscating their workers' passports, withholding pay, reneging on contracts, and even physically abusing their workers. -------------- --- Who supports and who opposes abolishing the sponsorship system? -------------- --- ¶8. (C) Thabet Ibrahim Al-Haroun, head of the International Labor Organization's Kuwait office, told PolOff at an August 6 meeting that senior and well-connected Kuwaitis, from many prominent families, are involved in the illegal visa trading and consequently outright abolition of the sponsorship system appears a remote possibility. However, Al-Haroun also said that the GOK is ready to act to reform sponsorship because the government-parliament political gridlock which has hamstrung the GOK for the past three years appears to be subsiding. He added that constant USG pressure, in the form of the TIP report, as well as Kuwaiti NGO activity, has KUWAIT 00000788 003 OF 003 encouraged those supporting reform, which he conceded would be gradual. -------------- --- Comment -------------- --- ¶9. (C) While MOSAL Minister Al-Afasi is showing commendable leadership in speaking publicly of even more drastic changes, an outright end to sponsorship appears yet to be a considerable distance away, in part because of the need to build a governmental framework that could support a self-sponsorship structure, and in part because of the large amounts of money that many Kuwaitis can earn through manipulation of the existing process. Nonetheless, the recently announced reform of the sponsorship system to permit greater labor mobility after three years is a positive and welcome development, which will give foreign workers here greater rights and the ability to leave bad employers for good ones, and represents a small but tangible step forward in addressing our labor rights and TIP concerns. End comment. ********************************************* ********* For more reporting from Embassy Kuwait, visit: visit Kuwait's Classified Website at: http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Kuwa it ********************************************* ********* WILLIAMS