KCCI meet discusses repercussions faced by nursery owners over virus
Students scholarships number up 44 pc
KUWAIT CITY, Oct 7: Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a meeting with the representatives of educational establishments that own private nurseries and officials from the ministries of Social Affairs and Health, Abdulaziz Abdul-Salam Shuaib the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Hana Saeed Al-Hajri the Assistant Undersecretary for Social Development Sector, and Dr Fahad Al-Ghamlas the Director of Public Health Department at the Ministry of Health, reports Al-Qabas daily.
The meeting was to present the repercussions faced by nursery owners as a result of not being included in the stages of returning to normal life - in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with the difficulty of renewing their licenses and the consequent commitment to rents and salaries.
The meeting was chaired by the Chamber’s Deputy Director General, Hamad Jarrah Al-Omar, who stressed that the sector is always keen on bringing together employers and officials in government agencies to discuss issues facing employers.
Regarding the resumption of work in the nurseries, Social Affairs officials clarified that the current suspension of activity is in compliance with the health procedures and instructions.
For his part, representative of the Ministry of Health stated that “despite the ministry’s full understanding of the economic repercussions on nursery owners and the social consequences resulting in the closure, the ministry in its decision to open some activities while others remain closed is guided by technical indicators about the benefits and risks of closing each activity.
The owners of nurseries were reassured that once the indicators improve and the health authorities are reassured of the possibility of resuming their activities, they would be allowed to practice.
True to what Al-Qabas daily warned in its September 22 issue in the article titled “Secondary school success rate… a crisis of admission and academic failure”, the total number of students admitted for foreign scholarships this year reached 2,848, which is an increase of 44 percent compared to last year when 1,977 had registered, reports Al-Qabas daily.
Ministry of Higher Education met the first setbacks of the high collective success rates of high school graduates, with an increase in the number of foreign scholarship seats by 871 compared to last year.
Public school graduates accounted for the lion’s share of this increase, as the number of admissions reached 2,256 students, which is an increase of 881 students compared to last year.
The number of students admitted from private schools and graduates outside the country decreased by about 10 students from last year.
However, the increase in scholarship seats did not solve the crisis, as the rise of top performers led to an increase in the number of applicants for seats in the field of medicine and dentistry, thereby making the competition fierce for these seats, and thus requiring an increase in the rates required for medical specialties.
Despite the increase in higher education medical seats in the plan of foreign scholarships by 12 percent compared to last year, it has not been able to cover all applicants for these specialties due to the increase in competition for them, which raised the minimum rates for admissions in the fields of medicine and dentistry.