KUWAIT CITY: ARAB NEWS
Saturday 15 June 2013
Last Update 15 June 2013 12:33 am
Kuwait has begun canceling the driving licenses of foreign students who have graduated and working housewives, tightening already strict rules for expatriates, a daily yesterday cited a top official as saying.
“The traffic department has started canceling the driving licenses” of those people, Interior Ministry assistant undersecretary for traffic affairs Maj. Gen. Abdulfattah Al-Ali told Al-Anbaa newspaper.
Ali said the measure was taken because the department found that expats given licenses as students have now started working, and the same for some housewives, “which amounts to an act of forgery.”
He estimated that “tens of thousands” of driving licenses will be withdrawn.
For nearly a decade, Kuwait has imposed strict conditions on the eligibility of its 2.6 million expats to drive.
Most foreigners are required to hold a university degree, earn 400 dinars ($1,400) a month and have lived legally in the emirate for at least two years before being able to drive legally.
Students and housewives with children had been among those exempted from the regulations, along with engineers, judges, lawyers and journalists.
But since his appointment some two months ago, Ali has led a campaign in which hundreds of expatriates have been deported without a court order for committing “grave” traffic offenses such as driving without a licenses and jumping red lights.
Kuwaiti citizens who commit similar traffic offenses can have their vehicles impounded, but only under a court order.
The campaign has received strong backing from the pro-government Parliament, with some MPs calling Ali a “hero.”
Source: http://www.arabnews.com/node/455094
