‘Jedea’ and expatriates

Application elusive

ABy Ahmad Al-Sarraf

nyone who attacks and criticizes the expatriates in the belief they are taking the jobs away from citizens is disdainful and incapable of doing anything worthy.

This person may be seeking fame and might have got the votes of the ignorant people and the mobs, while he is undoubtedly aware that these expatriates did not force their way into our country.

They did not oblige us to accept them or stormed into our land and air or violated our borders and forced us to undergo medical tests or examine their security and criminal records and then placed residence stickers on their passports.

We are the ones who did all of this and accepted them because of our inability, unwillingness or failure to do the tasks that sometimes need hands and minds more often than not and between these and those we cannot do such tasks.

The state-owned Industrial Institute of Shuwaikh which opened its doors in the 1950s, trained hundreds of Kuwaiti technicians, they graduated from this institute but failed to provide anything worthwhile to any of our facilities even to one of them after millions of dinars were spent to train them. The whole country has been hit by this failure and perhaps the education and the oil sectors were hardest hit.

Ahmad Al-Arbeed wrote an article in Al-Qabas on August 27 under the title ‘Jedea al-Mutairi’, a man equal to a thousand men. He stated that he met Jedea, the Kuwaiti working in the Kuwait Oil Company and the latter took Arbeed on a tour of the oil facilities. He learned from this semi-literate worker a lot which he did not even learn even from a graduate of the American University and at the end of the article Al-Arbeed praised Jedea and described him as ‘thousand men’. But what is next?

Mr Al-Arbeed was promoted and became Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Kuwait Oil Company, as Chairman and Managing Director of other oil companies, but he did not do anything either to Jedea or to hundreds of men like him who worked with dedication and sincerity in the company.

Perhaps it is not the fault of Jedea but it is still the fault of the government and policies of dispensing with the services of the citizen, replacing him with a thousand expatriates to satisfy the MPs and the influential people who employ those who they want.

The story of Jedea is impressive but it did nothing to urge Arbeed or other heads of companies and ministers to put in place the proper and practical programs to train national cadres within long-term programs.

We show no urgency in applying the policy of replacing without proper qualification and training as was the case in the program of Khalid Al-Masoud, which is related to the Kuwaitization of the education sector. The result was disastrous, and we continue to pay for it, and we hope that the same mistake will not be repeated in the draft of Minister Azab concerning shortening the term of prosecutors and the urgency of promoting them to become judges.

Yes, Jedea was a man equal to a thousand men, so he had to go so that they could put a thousand men in his place.

The funny, but sad thing is that Mr Al-Arbeed was behind the idea of making Kuwait the oil capital of the world and said this depends primarily on the national human element to be the cornerstone of development in the coming years, but he may have forgotten that he had already sacrificed Jedea and others and replaced them with expatriates, perhaps for his own ambitions, or perhaps in response to the pressures of his religious political party, or the government and MPs.

Conclusion: Setting up ideas is beautiful, writing articles easy, demonstrating administrative muscles is the easiest, but the lesson to be learnt is in the application.

Al-Sarraf

e-mail:

habibi.enta1@gmail.com