A gloomy future
Ablogger recently re-posted Al-Rai TV’s interview with MP Adnan Abdulsamad, the Head of the parliament’s budgets committee. Though the interview was a few months old, the figures that he had mentioned did not change, nor did the government deny them. He said that, in addition to his salary and bonus, an undersecretary annually receives around KD 60,000 as allowances in return for extra tasks as being a part of work teams, committees, boards of directors, etc. Samad added that, in addition to his KD 5,500 monthly salary, a foreign advisor annually gets KD 9,20,000 as bonuses, and a senior official working in a body related to public funds gets the same, and that his deputy gets much more.
Such figures are few examples of profiteering in state departments. It is one of innumerable forms of corruption that are often considered non-discussable taboos because it is linked to some influential people. These taboos were kept under lids till the interview took place, about which nobody was concerned during the previous years of oil affluence. Everyone was drugged with grants and salary incentives that flooded Kuwait after the Arab Spring as a means to ‘keep a hand in each mouth’ (bribe works miracles). However, despite the government’s warnings, I have so far not heard any governmental statements that can correct or deny Abdulsamad’s comments when he addressed minister Sheikh Mohammed Al-Abdullah as the head of the Civil Services Commission. The lawmaker warned that the ‘knife has reached the bones,’ but it seems like this knife is going to pierce through many of this country’s citizens.
We have repeatedly asked senior officials to set good examples for people to follow in distress, to show more loyalty and to fight corruption in departments under their jurisdiction. Until then, citizens will not stop giving and sacrificing for their and their kids’ future. The gap is widening and the government has no vision on bridging it. Your future is very gloomy.