Kuwait Employment and Career News
Migrant workforce, the biggest issue faced by the Gulf
According to the former Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) the growing migrant workforce in the Gulf is the biggest issue that the region is facing currently.
Mike Moore, the former New Zealand Prime Minister has warned that the sheer number of expatriates residing in the oil-rich Kuwait is equivalent to colonization.
The GCC is dependent on imported labour, with approximately 13mn foreign workers residing in its six states, which comprises 37 percent of the population. In Dubai, the expatriates outnumber citizens by five to one.
Although Moore agrees that there is no ready solution available to this demographic imbalance, the region’s monarchies act as a buffer against the foreign workforce.
In this case, Moore’s comments are the likes of that said by Dr. Majeed Al Alawi, the Bahrain Labour Minister, who openly claimed the need for introducing a residency cap for unskilled migrants, enforcing a maximum five-year stay in the Gulf.
“We need to protect society and our identity as an Arab nation, without being racist,” he said, warning that the local population risked being alienated by expat influx.
Moore also condemned the increasing tendency of Gulf States to buy foreign farmland in developing countries, a move aimed at shoring up food security. Some such big deals made in recent times are Saudi’s acquisition of 500,00 hectares of land in Tanzania and UAE’s purchase of 400,000 hectares in Sudan.
During Moore’s tenure at WTO, he was the architect of Doha Round of trade negotiations in 2001. The talks aimed to cut down farm subsidies and agricultural tariffs, aiming to help poor countries to grow through trade. The Doha Round is currently the longest-running set of multilateral trade talks in history.
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