Kuwait Airways sacks 1,500 expat employees

KUWAIT CITY - Kuwaiti Airways is heading to lay off about 1500 expats out of a total of 6000, the sources said that the senior management has no intention to end the services of Kuwaiti citizens who have exceeded the age of sixty.

This comes in accordance with Kuwaitization plans to implement now, after it stopped its operations since the government took the precautionary measures to confront the Corona pandemic in March.

The source said that a committee had been formed by the higher management departments and the union of employees of the company to follow up the implementation of the plan to reduce the number of expats after the CEO took the decision in this regard.

Kuwaitis or Gulf citizens or married couples married to Kuwaiti women and vice versa are not included in termination list to ensure the rights of employees and preserve Kuwaiti families.

The reduction in staff is made according to the requirements and needs of each department. For example, the Operations Department includes about 500 pilots (most of whom are Kuwaitis) and 1300 hosts and hostesses (most of them are expats). The same source said that estimates of airline losses in the world during the current year will reach 314 billion dollars, the share of the Middle East region of which is about 24 billion, and the loss of 1.2 million jobs in the sector in the region will be reflected negatively.

In the midst of this gloomy economy and the state of uncertainty, it was surprising how the annual bonus was paid to workers during the past month in light of a severe crisis which not only Kuwaiti airline suffered alone, but all airlines in the world including the most important and largest companies in the region. Where austerity plans were announced reducing the employees and reducing the costs.