Kuwait to soon reward COVID-19 frontliners and excellent work employees

KUWAIT CITY: The government employees within the next few days will receive bonuses including those who the State described as ‘frontline’ workers during the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Civil Service Commission will review the names of those who deserve the remuneration and then submit the list for the Council of Ministers for approval. Also those eligible for bonuses are employees of the Ministry of Education who are on the list for ‘excellent performance award’. They are believed to be about 21,000 teachers and will cost the State treasury 55 million dinars.

Add to this the 339 employees of the Ministry of Electricity and Water, whose list was sent to the Central Bank of Kuwait to disburse the money.

In this context, informed sources said that the Ministry of Interior had submitted the lists of those entitled to the “frontlines” reward to the Civil Service Commission (CSC), indicating that it would pay out two salaries to all deserving employees, in addition to the medal of duty for the military at about 75 dinars as a salary increase. For its part, the General Administration of Customs has also submitted the list of names of those who are considered as ‘frontline workers’ which has been referred to the Minister of Finance in preparation for submitting it to the Council of Ministers.

In the meantime, the Ministry of Electricity and Water confirmed sending the lists of its frontline workers to the CSC after making a slight amendment (deleting some names) and including the names of about 30 to 40 employees who deserve a bonus, and whose names were previously not registered.

The sources added that the ministry’s employees are also waiting for the food allowance to be included with the current month’s salary, which is believed to be 60 dinars for about 10,000 employees who work on a shift system, and which was supposed to be applied since last year, but no budget was provided.

Meanwhile, the Acting Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education, Assistant Undersecretary for Educational Development, Faisal Maqsid, told the Al-Seyassah daily, that the file of ‘reward for excellent work’ for all eligible people will be compiled by Dec 1, 2020, and will be referred to the finance sector of the ministry for review and the money for the eligible educational and administrative sector will be disbursed by Dec 10 this year.

For her part, Assistant Undersecretary for Administrative Affairs, Raja’a Bouaraki, said in a statement to the daily, the files of those eligible for excellent reward from the administration sector of the Ministry of Education are ready and money will be disbursed after the completion of all necessary evaluation procedures.