This was stated by a senior Foreign Ministry official in response to a recent United States Department of State Report which lists the Gulf state among countries that make no significant effort to meet minimum standards of compliance set by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a 2000 law that allows for the prevention and prosecution of human trafficking.
“Reports suggesting that inhuman practices are present in Kuwait often contain a lot of exaggeration”, said Director of the Follow-up and Coordination Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Khalid Al-Maghames.
He further told Al-Anba daily on Thursday that the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor is working on abolishing the sponsorship system for labor forces, and that in response to criticisms mentioned in the US report about the system subjecting employees to forced labor.
A report last week suggested that the Public Labor Authority, a state body that replaces the sponsorship system in handling all matters pertaining with private sector employees including recruitment of expatriate labor forces and managing their relationship with their employers, is set to be established in the very near future.
The news, which provided no exact date for setting up the authority, came shortly after the parliament passed a bill to establish it, and that three years after the enforcement of the private sector’s labor law in 2010.
