15,700 illegal residents at Kuwait's amnesty shelter facilities

KUWAIT CITY: On the second day large number of residence violators visited amnesty centers in Farwaniya and Jleeb areas to take advantage amnesty period which was launched by the Ministry of Interior early this month and continues until the end of it.

Around 1500 residence violators of different nationalities mostly Asian and African were accepted at the centers who registered to leave the country without paying any fines and free ticket.

The head of the evacuation and shelter, Major General Abdin Al-Abidin stated that the centers dealt quickly with the large numbers of violators of the residence law from all communities to take advantage of the decision of the Ministry of Interior.

They were received and completed their travel procedures easily and conveniently in order to achieve the goal.

Al-Abideen added that, since the Ministry of the Interior’s deadline to leave the violators began April 1, the reception centers for residency violators received about 17,700 violators of various nationalities, noting that 2,000 of Filipino community left already.

He stated that the shelter for residence violators hold about 15700 violators of various nationalities, led by the Indians by about 4,500 violators, expecting that the number will rise to more than 20,000 by the end of this month and awaiting the response of their countries to start the deportation process.

He mentioned that hundreds of violators of both sexes have come since the morning to the four centers designated to receive them, including two in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh and two in the Farwaniya area, and it is expected that the turnout will increase during the coming days that were allocated from the Ministry of Interior and Arab nationalities including Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, Jordanian, and African countries including Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, and Asian countries from Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and China will benefit from them.

He expected that the number of violators by the end of the month would reach 7,000 violators of different nationalities, explaining that the Ministry of Interior is coordinating with the embassies of those community’s countries regarding opening the airspace for the departure of its citizens.

He pointed out that yesterday the number exceeded 1500 violators whose travel procedures were completed and transferred to the shelters, in preparation for their travel as soon as possible, praising the efforts of some embassies that were present in the evacuation centers to assist their citizens such as the Sudanese, Ethiopian, Bangladeshi, Kenyan and others.

Maj. Gen. Al-Abideen pointed out that as a humanitarian gesture, violators who have been stuck and could not return back yesterday to their homes as curfew period had started, they were admitted to one of the school halls designated for evacuation and food and drinking were provided to them. In the morning when their papers were completed and they were sent to the shelter center.

In turn, the administrative director at the Sudanese embassy in Kuwait Hussein Hassan thanked Kuwait’s efforts and humanitarian decision to allow the violators to travel without paying fines, indicating that 150 documents were issued to Sudanese nationals during the period of exemption 250 other documents were issued, noting that their work continued until the end of the period as per requirements by the Ministry of Interior.

In the same context, a security source denied that there is an intention to extend the grace period to allow expats while exempting from paying fines for violators, which will end at the end of this month, explaining that the countries do not want to receive their citizens due to corona crisis.