bye bye....  

Celia2005 8/19/2009 1:22 am

Bye, bye sponsors and human traffickers! August 19, 2009 By Muna Al-Fuzai, Staff Columnist It is good to see the Kuwaiti government do something to fight visa trading by decreasing the power of sponsors over their employees. Many workers have been waiting for this decision for many years. Previously, they have been held hostage by the old rules, and many were not lucky enough to find a way out of their situations. Some had to pay a high price while others even paid with their lives. The age of terror that some sponsors were allowed to unleash on their employees is now over and is now a topic for the history books. It is finally over, and it is my topic for the day. The latest decision issued by the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor to allow laborers working in the private sector to transfer their residencies to other sponsors without approval of the current sponsors is a great move that will put an end to human trafficking in Kuwait. I pray that we will never revert back to the old ways. I do hope this decision stays in place forever and is not changed because some powerful individuals disapprove of it. In the end, we are required to follow international laws abou t the matter, and this decision is a good one. The image of Kuwait has been tarnished in the international community because of the issue of abuse by sponsors to their employees. In many cases, the sponsorship system was used to transfer some workers as prisoners to other sponsors who abused their rights and did not allow these individuals to make a living. Many of these employees were like prisoners under their sponsors, and some of those who managed to escape turned to lives of crime and actually ended up in real prisons. This decision from the minis try was desperately needed, and it is better that it came late than never. I wonder now about the visa traders who used to make money from this trade for so many years. Some of these traders made complaints to the media and maintained that the decision will provoke rebellion among workers who will be encouraged to quit whenever they want a higher salary. I must confess that I do not see anything wrong with people wanting better positions and better salaries, especially here in Kuwait where many people with college degrees have been forced to accept jobs with small salaries. Now t hey have an opportunity to find better jobs that match their qualifications. But this is not acceptable in the eyes of the human traffickers, of course. I really hope the government and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor will enforce this law and take it seriously. This is not only about us, it is about the image we project to the international community. So, say goodbye to the sponsorship system - it is time it died and never comes back....