Grandpa & the official gazette

Other Voices

IBy Ahmad alsarraf

wrote in the corner of Al-Mabit Box (memory box) which is published by the Al-Qabas newspaper every Friday that it was the late Kuwaiti formative artiste Moajab Al-Dossari who designed the famous blue cover of the official gazette ‘Al-Kuwait Al-Youm’, the first issue of which was published on December 11, 1954 by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Education because there was no Ministry of Information at that time which took the task later. The story is worth telling.

My grandfather’s exchange shop, as I remember well, was the first for the comers from the Bin Duaij market. It was one of a chain of money exchanges and adjacent to Mansour alSarraf’s shop, the father of a wellknown lawyer Abdul Hamid al-Sarraf. There were, as I remember, money changers for Al-Muzaini, Al-Mansour, Al-Abdali, Nasrallah al-Sarraf, Abdullah Eidan al-Sarraf and others.

There was also a row of ghee-selling shops behind the money exchange market, and on the common wall of the two markets, the then government placed its official advertisements within a wooden frame with a plastic cover. The Bedouins used to come to the city either on foot or on their camels, to showcase and sell their products such as ghee, or fat, wool and leather, and then buy their seasonal needs of food and fabrics and return where they came from.

The Safat Square was their station where they slept with their camels perched on the ground. Some of them had a good relationship with my grandfather Jassim, and they trusted him for their money, which was kept in front of them in iron coffers. They also asked my grandfather, and often my father, to read them the government ads pinned on the billboard hanging on the side of the shop, which was like the official gazette.

With the increase of oil resources, the increasing demands of the state and the multiplicity of its needs and the complexity of the relationship between

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government departments on the one hand and between those who deal with it on the other hand, it was necessary to find a way to facilitate the relationship between all parties through a practical media, hence the idea of issuing official weekly newspaper to link government departments with each other and businessmen, companies and individuals and to abandon the primitive method of placing official advertisements on the walls of the markets to be read by the relevant and be familiar with the orders or offers contained.

Faced with this situation, in September 1954, the secretary in the office of the Administrative Director of the Education Department, Bader Al-Khaled Al-Badr, sent a letter to the Director of the Financial Department, proposing the issuance of an official newspaper to fill an important administrative gap, with the approval of the Higher Executive Committee or the Council of Ministers.

Bader Al-Badr’s proposal was welcomed by the Financial Director of Education Khalid Al-Muslim, who sent a letter to the Higher Executive Committee on the subject, and approved the proposal, thanked him and Al-Badr, and sent the approval accompanied by a letter to the Department of Education, which was signed by Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad (His Highness the Amir).

Soon after, the Supreme Executive Committee informed all government departments (ministries) of the issuance of an official gazette and asked them to nominate delegates to attend the meeting to discuss the procedures related to the issuance.

Representatives of government departments held two meetings on Oct 26 and 30 of 1954 at the Shura Council building, during which the features of the issuance were formed. Yousef Mishari Al-Hassan, Talat Al-Ghusain and Bader Al-Khaled Al-Badr were elected members and the first issue was published on December 11, 1954.

We offer our deepest condolences to our dear reader, Mrs Bakinam Khalaf, the eldest daughter of the late friend Khaled Khalaf El Telji on the death of her husband Walid Belqassem, following a tragic traffic accident, in Tunisia.

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