Flat Owners to be Prohibited from Sponsorship of Maids
Flat owners to be banned from sponsoring maids
From today’s Al Watan
Staff Writer
KUWAIT: As the number of maids employed in the country has alarmingly reached 560,000 the authorities have issued new instructions to regulate the presence of domestic laborers in the country.
According to sources at the Ministry of Interior, the ministry will not grant visas or residency permits to any nonـKuwaitis or expatriates seeking to hire domestic laborers as long as they live in apartments.
The only exception for expatriates seeking to hire maids, according to the sources, will be for those who have a compound surrounding their houses and in that case they will be required to provide a document authenticating that claim.
It has been gathered that the authorities have taken these measures in order to stem the visa trafficking trade in the country which usually results in the laborers ending up on the streets. The sources further disclosed that a special committee has been set up within the ministry to discuss issues pertaining to the issuance of visas and passports as well as issues concerning expatriate workers. They explained that the committee seeks to eliminate bureaucracy, centralization and to ensure justice and equality among companies and individuals.
Meanwhile, MPs Ahmed AlـSaadoun, Marzouq AlـHubaini, Ali AlـDeqbasi, Musallam AlـBarrak and Hassan AlـJohar submitted additional amendments to the Labor Law, calling for licensing a certain number of recruitment firms that specialize in hiring professional workers from abroad to join the local private sector. In the proposed amendments, the five MPs suggested that such recruitment firms would not be permitted to levy any recruitment charges on business owners or collect any fees from the recruited employees.
The proposal also forbids business owners from employing nonـKuwaitis without obtaining prior permission from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor.
Last updated on Monday 9/2/2009
Stat Bump Laugh
Kuwait bloggers, if your statistics matter to you, if you want one great day, get blogger Mark, at 248am.com to give your blog a shout-out, and a link.
I got a one day bump of nearly double my daily traffic when he referred to me in a blog entry. LLOOLLL; you can see the spike so clearly!
At one time he used to post his stats; he had over 2 million the last time I saw them, which was a long time ago, and got over 10,000 hits a day. Imagine . . . . 🙂
Rising Dowries in Kuwait an Obstacle to Marriage
From today’s <a href="“> Arab Times
Rising dowries key problem in failed marriages – survey
KUWAIT, Jan 17, (KUNA): Kuwaiti youth oppose vehemently the extremely high dowries and wedding expenses amid an economic and social downturn in the society due to the current economic crisis, according to a recent academic survey. Dowry is always a bone of contention among the families of bride and bridegroom, said the survey, carried out by the Kuwait University.
Young men are more critical of rising dowries than girls, the study entitled “Social Value of Dowries in Kuwaiti Society”, showed. It highlighted the reality of dowries in Kuwait and their relative significance and social impacts, calling for taking into consideration gender differences and social and cultural changes. The survey involved a sample of 700 men and women aged between 20 and 56 from different areas in the six Kuwaiti governorates. It showed that 78 percent of the sample viewed dowries as exorbitantly high, 82.4 percent considered dowry as the key problem in surging wedding expenses, while 28.1 percent believed that Kuwaiti girls pay too much heed to dowry. The respondents are mostly dissatisfied with dowries, with 85.7 percent of the sampled men and 70 percent of the sampled women believing that dowries are too high.
Sometimes, it is the dowry which determines whether marriage can be completed due to familial hard-mindedness and intransigence, it said. The survey attributed surging dowries to women’s employment, education, lack of acquaintance and girls’ young age. It indicated common gender social awareness of social reflections of uncontrollably rising dowries on the entire Kuwaiti society. For instance, young men are now reluctant to marry Kuwaiti girls, resorting to non-Kuwaiti females, spinsterhood is growing and secret and unofficial marriage cases are mounting, it said. In conclusion, the survey recommended that the culture of moderation, especially regarding dowries, should be disseminated pursuant to the Islamic Sharia’ or Law in bid to alleviate the negative social effects of mounting dowries in the Kuwaiti society.
Young Kuwaiti men have told me that Kuwaiti women “cost too much”, that they would rather marry a hard-working Philipina girl, or a western woman, who will work and help with household expenses, than to borrow the money required to support a Kuwaiti woman.
A young Kuwaiti woman told me it is a growing problem for them, too, as they find themselves facing a dwindling pool of eligible bachelors, and that while the men are supposed to be able to support them in a style the same as they are supported by their father’s household, it doesn’t take into account that their fathers also did not always have so much money. It seems to be that both sexes have a clear idea of what the obstacles and problems are, but no one seems to know what to do about it.
Dressing for the Weather
Thank God for the sun beating in our place for a goodly part of the day. The cold has seeped in so deeply that I have to wear heavy slippers, and I am still wearing my heavy fleece robe. Here is what it looks like at seven on a Saturday morning:
Beautiful golden sunrise – but make that a beautiful COLD golden sunrise:
Here’s the problem. I get all bundled up to stay warm inside, then when I am outside, the weather is gently toasty and I am overdressed! I strip off a layer of jacket and scarf and I am OK – unless I am sitting in the shade, in which case the jacket comes in handy again. Today we will be moving around a lot, so I may find myself a little overheated. 🙂
Things are not going to get better in the next few days – take a look:
Dress warmly, Kuwait, and get out there and enjoy this fabulous weather!
Out of Control
I can’t help it, I watch my statistics. I watch them even though they are totally out of my control. The truth, as I see it, is that when I write, mostly I write about things that interest me, and when I think I am writing about something that interests you, I often get it wrong.
Some of the best posts come out of nowhere. As my friend and I were leaving downtown heading home the other day, we passed the ruins, and the light was so good and the ruins so begging to be photographed, I jumped out and – literally, snapped some shots. I had my friend waiting patiently in the car, I didn’t want to be perceived as photographing the British embassy and all the security problems that could involve – so I was snapping and snapping quickly, without a lot of thought or effort, and that post is another one of those which my commenters then helped write, and helped educate us all. The same is true with several posts – ones that I just toss off, or tiny news items I share with you end up getting huge hits months later – totally out of my control.
Every year, the day after Christmas, my statistics take a huge dip. The first year, I was shocked and discouraged, the second year, I was disappointed, but this year – ho hummmm. They are now creeping back up to where they were, and I just have to put this all in God’s hands – I can call this “my” blog, but I have to laugh at how all I really can do is to provide content, and then trust that it will go where it is meant to go.
Today the statistics showed that I have passed 2,000 blog entries. This one is 2002. People have made almost 14,000 comments.
Thank you for being a part of this amazing experience. Some of you I have come to know as you comment regularly, some of you I have conversations with in the background, a very few of you know me in real life and give me material for some of the posts, and some, I am guessing, are Kuwaiti students away at university who hunger for a glimpse of home and check in for the sunrise over the gulf and weather. The vast majority of you glance through, and never stop to say hello. (Aaarrgh!)
My very favorite posts are the ones YOU help write. You share information, you correct my erroneous impression, you give me ideas where to go for further research. You share your photos. You share your recipes. You share your grandparents’ stories. Thank you. Thank you. Please come back often. 🙂
Lucky People Tend to Notice More
From today’s AOL News
The key to good luck may be a heightened sensitivity to your surroundings.
Richard Wiseman, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire, spent a decade studying people who had self-identified as either lucky or unlucky. He posits that lucky people, through their superior observational skills, consistently encounter seemingly chance opportunities.
In one experiment, Wiseman asked his subjects to count the photos in a newspaper. In the middle of the paper he placed a message that read “Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win 50 dollars.” The lucky people tended to notice this, but the unlucky — with their narrower focus — often missed it.
Some Forecasters See a Fast Economic Recovery
From today’s New York Times: Business:
Economics as the dismal science? Not in some quarters.
In the midst of the deepest recession in the experience of most Americans, many professional forecasters are optimistically heading into the new year declaring that the worst may soon be over.
For this rosy picture to play out, they are counting on the Obama administration and Congress to come through with a substantial stimulus package, at least $675 billion over two years.
They say that will get the economy moving again in the face of persistently weak spending by consumers and businesses, not to mention banks that are reluctant to extend credit.
If the dominoes fall the right way, the economy should bottom out and start growing again in small steps by July, according to the December survey of 50 professional forecasters by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. Investors seemed to be in a similarly optimistic mood on Friday, bidding up stocks by about 3 percent.
But in the absence of that government stimulus, the grim economic headlines of 2008 will probably continue for some time, these forecasters acknowledge.
Read the entire article HERE
Brrrr. . . . Shiver . . . Cold in Kuwait
When I checked my WeatherUnderground readings for this morning, I laughed when I saw that the weather at 0630 in Kuwait was exactly the same as in Damascus, Syria, and colder than Seattle! Oh you disbelievers! Here is what it looked like:
It is going to be another GORGEOUS day in Kuwait – cold, clear and sunshiny. OK, AdventureMan, you are right . . . it is nice to have sunshine every day. 🙂
As lovely as it is, this weather is very hard on the poor, without adequate protection from the cold. Please, if you are feeling generous, please help out the good people at Operation Hope – Kuwait as they gather gently used shoes, coats and warm bedding to distribute to the poorest of the poor. No matter what you can give (they can always use your monetary donations, too!) every penny will benefit those who need it the most – the very very poor.
Muslim Prisoners in France
One of the things that keeps me blogging is the input I get from my readers. Behind the scenes this morning, I was sent two fascinating articles. This first one, from blogger Facts and Doubts, is an article from The Washington Post on Muslim Prisoners in France – and Europe.
Here is just a short excerpt from an article you will want to read:
This prison is majority Muslim — as is virtually every house of incarceration in France. About 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the country’s prison system are Muslim, according to Muslim leaders, sociologists and researchers, though Muslims make up only about 12 percent of the country’s population.
On a continent where immigrants and the children of immigrants are disproportionately represented in almost every prison system, the French figures are the most marked, according to researchers, criminologists and Muslim leaders.
“The high percentage of Muslims in prisons is a direct consequence of the failure of the integration of minorities in France,” said Moussa Khedimellah, a sociologist who has spent several years conducting research on Muslims in the French penal system.
In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about 3 percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry. Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organization, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim. In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found.
I had no idea. And my eyes were opened to food being a big issue in prison – but of course. (smacks head) Thank you, Facts and Doubts, for passing along this fascinating and enlightening article.
LOL@Stats
What happened is that two years ago I wrote a post called Halloween Warning and it got a little attention, but this year, people would Google “halloween” and then they would come to this blog entry.
It’s like how can you get all wrapped up in statistics when what happens is so random and unpredictable? On Halloween day, I got 3,172 hits. I’m a very limited blogger, I don’t have the kind of blog that attracts huge numbers – and while that may look like a huge number, it is discouraging when I know that I may never see a figure like that again.
My top all time posts are led by a picture of a birthday cake. I admit, it is a gorgeous cake, I spent a lot of time looking for just the right cake, but . . . my all time high?
There is nothing like blogging to keep you humble, and from taking yourself too seriously. 
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