The legal and legislative committee of Kuwait’s National Assembly has given passage to a draft expat quota bill that could result in exodus of as many as eight lakh Indians from the country.
According to the committee, the draft bill is constitutional and seeks to regulate the number of Indians to 15 per cent of the population. The draft bill will be handed over to the respective committee for formulating a comprehensive plan, reports said.
As reported in Gulf News, Indians constitute the largest expatriate community living in Kuwait. Altogether 1.45 million Indians are staying in Kuwait and the new bill could force as much as eight lakh of them to leave the country.
A month before the National Assembly cleared the draft bill, Kuwait’s prime minister had said that the country’s expat population should be scaled down from 70 to 30 per cent of the total population.
According to government data cited by local media, 3.4 million of Kuwait’s 4.8 million population are foreigners.
