the bedouin problem surfaced sixty years ago. their presence in kuwait was natural because of the urban land connection to the desert land, the easy access to grazing grounds or citizens of the neighboring countries coming in search of better living conditions, shelter, food, affiliation or any other.
this phenomenon encouraged them, they raised their families and brought in their relatives to live with them when they saw others having successful livelihoods and acquiring the citizenship of the country without much effort. they wanted to do the same, but as days and years passed without the means to facilitate their acquisition of citizenship, they resorted to bribing and other means to acquire the nationality of the country.
ever since the problem of the bedouin or illegal residents as they are called here, successive governments have always chosen to postpone their decision on this issue, perhaps in the belief one day the issue will just vanish in thin air, just disappear or those seeking citizenship will one day return to the desert life or their homelands, but none of this happened but the so-called bedouin continued to grumble and the issue snowballed.
this repeated postponement, year after year, is the cause of the basic problem of the bedouin and the same will be the fate of the forged or fake certificates (whatever you may call them) because of the repeated postponement of the decision until a day will come when we will find the number of counterfeiters equal those who are holding genuine certificates.
it was reported in al-qabas daily a few days ago that the road to implementing a law on the issue of the fake certificates has come to a dead end. in the midst of this civil service commission nominates citizens to work in government institutions, only to see their nominations turned down until their certificates are approved by the higher education authorities and as a result the prospective employee and the employer have to wait for several months, especially after the decision of the ministry of health to assign the responsibility to look into the certificates of thousands of doctors to the ministry of higher education.
the ministry of education, during the tenure of minister bader al-essa, had already formed two committees to investigate forged certificates – one committee to look into the certificates and another to get in touch with the certificate issuing university.
the report of the university committee concluded that all university faculty members are considered graduates of accredited universities. then came the law from the parliament presented by the current minister of education, which requires the ratification and equivalence and it included everyone, even the teaching staff and those who sent for the scholarship, who have already served the ministry for more than thirty years. the issue of certificate validation is a very complex issue.
if we assume that the ministry of higher education discovered cases of fraud or fake certificates among the university faculty, what is the legal action towards those who have spent three decades in teaching or the judiciary, who have already taught several generations, and some graduates are now holding degrees?
will it void all the decisions they have made? we ask if it is the right of the fatwa and legislation department to suspend the law issued by the parliament, or request that it be referred to the constitutional court for its consideration.
the situation is delicate, disastrous because as we see it, forgery is deeprooted and its delay will only exacerbate the situation.
by the way, the public manpower authority has refused to renew the residence permit of 4,809 engineers, most of them of a certain arab nationality, after failing the tests prepared by the kuwaiti society of engineers.
if this is the situation of engineers and before them doctors and other important and vital specialties, what is the situation of the rest of the specialties, relatively less serious?
what is happening is haram and still worse if we continue to ignore the problem it is worse.