Kuwait: Education minister under fire

National Assembly speaker Jassem Al-Khorafi said yesterday that conditions for holding the emergency parliamentary session have been completed and he has notified the government. Khorafi said the session will be held after an Amiri decree is issued calling for the session. He also said that the date of the session will be determined in the Amiri decree although MPs who requested the session have suggested the session to be on August 15. Thirty-three MPs last week submitted the request to convene the session to discuss what many lawmakers described as a serious crisis regarding the failure of Kuwait University to admit thousands of students. Khorafi said that all the issues regarding the admission problem should be debated in one day, including a proposal by five MPs to have additional budget allocations of KD30 million to admit the Kuwaiti students who were denied admission by Kuwait University. Head of the Assembly Education Committee MP Jamaan Al-Harbash said that there is no solution in the horizon for the admission problem, and warned that the problem will develop into a major political and social crisis. Harbash said the education minister Ahmad Al-Mulaifi failed to propose the required solutions to the problem during Monday's meeting with the committee as only 1,370 students were admitted out of more than 5,000 students who applied for scholarships. He said that the ministry undersecretary told the committee that the ministry can admit a maximum of 300 students more, which leaves thousands of students without seats inside and outside Kuwait. Harbash said that the admission crisis is expected to intensify in the coming years because the new state university which was supposed to be ready after three years will not be ready before 2020 at a cost of KD4 billion, which will seriously aggravate the problem. The lawmaker called for a deep investigation with all former and current officials who are responsible of delaying the new university project and accordingly contributing to the crisis. A member of the committee MP Faisal Al-Muslim accused the education minister of being part of the problem when he said there was no need for holding an emergency parliamentary session. Muslim called on the minister to shoulder his responsibilities or step down, adding that the government tactic now is to delay the problem until the second semester "which we must not accept". MP Mukhled Al-Azemi meanwhile proposed that the government should utilize millions of dinars from the offset program to send thousands of Kuwaiti students on scholarships to foreign universities.