the ministry of social affairs, through field inspection teams, as is the custom every year, revealed a large number of violations of fundraising during the month of ramadan, and seized funds collected from worshippers and mosque visitors.
the ministry teams conducted hundreds of field visits to the mosques, in addition to 44 visits to the headquarters of “charity” societies, and monitored 450 various violations, the most notable of which were for people and entities that called for collecting funds via social media, setting up clothes collection kiosks, and registering violations against 28 restaurants that called for collecting money in the form of donations for ‘iftar meals’, in addition to monitoring five food supply companies and a central market calling for fundraising via social media!
the ministry also monitored 321 violating advertisements for charities, organizations, and other entities, and they were contacted to remove them, in addition to monitoring a violation for a civil society organization that called for collecting donations for the benefit of cancer patients (!!). the ministry also monitored four violations of donations on social networking sites, and other serious violations.
for more than thirty years, i have been writing about these same violations, which are repeated year after year, through which thousands of violators have collected hundreds of millions of dinars, often under false pretexts, including hiring preachers, printing the qur’an, and digging wells, all of which are often for reasons whose authenticity cannot be verified.
the ministry of social affairs knows that these are lies, the awqaf knows, and commerce knows. no one can put an end to this laxity, which is led by several people, one of whom had previously had his citizenship withdrawn and then restored. hence, they continue to confront him in his deception, and claim, through various means of communication, that he is spending it on hire advocates!
a charity organization also carried out an unpleasant act, announcing that it had received donations, even if it was ten dinars, to help buy a church and turn it into a mosque (!!).
this seasonal rush to collect donations, repeated annually in the same ways and with almost the same people, is due to three reasons:
1. the huge amount of money collected each season. the majority of ignorant people seeking a reward do not care where their money goes, as long as they do what they owe.
2. the ease of raising money through these methods, and the laxity of the concerned authorities in holding them accountable. these violations often end with a signature or a warning!
3. the absence of laws criminalizing these actions, which are immoral and harmful to the state’s economy, and the absence of a desire to stress them, perhaps because the interests of these people coincide with the interests of some legislators.
we see the repetition of such crimes in tampering with citizenship, and in treatment files abroad, which are repeated year after year, whether by sending those who do not deserve treatment, or falsifying bills for medicine and treatment in health offices.
we also see it in the falsification of documents “proving” disability, which has also continued for more than twenty years, without stopping. even the amnesty lists were not spared, as it was stated by the candidate and former mp marzouq alghanim that the latest lists included the name of the person who was subjected to repeated insults to three of the state’s amirs, and it is known who he is, while the names of thousands of deserving people were forgotten.
it is necessary, and in the spirit of responsibility, to extend our thanks and gratitude to the wise leadership that emphasized the grave damage to national identity through tampering with kuwaiti citizenship.
given what national identity represents in terms of survival, existence, governance, and the fate of a country, an attack on it is an attack on the entity of the state and its basic components and cannot be tolerated. therefore, we praise and support all efforts and measures aimed at preserving national identity.
thank you from the bottom of my heart, your highness the amir, for your great stance and support for the efforts of the minister of interior.