Kuwait: A National Assembly member accused expatriates of being the cause for long lines at hospitals and called to send them to hospitals in Farwaniya and Jleeb Al Shuyoukh, two of Kuwait’s poorest neighbourhoods.
MP Safaa Al Hashem made the remarks when she was commenting on the response of Health Minister Sheikh Dr Basel Al Sabah to one of her questions on overcrowding at maternity hospitals in the country.
She claimed that overcrowding was because of the large numbers of expatriate women, claiming that some of them come from outside Kuwait on visit visas especially for delivery to enjoy good and almost free services at public hospitals.
“An expatriate woman with her belly 10 meters ahead of her comes just 10 days before birth,” she told the National Assembly.
She said that these women are then admitted at public hospitals, given excellent services and then they walk away with their babies “with the payment of just KD3”.
She claimed that the standard of maternity hospitals was deteriorating because they have to deal with many expatriate women and called for allocating good hospitals around Kuwait City, especially the Amiri, Sabah and Jaber hospitals for Kuwaitis only and called for sending expatriate patients to Farwaniya and Jleeb Al Shuyoukh.
Hashem has been very vocal in criticising expatriates, at one stage calling for taxing them for the air they breathe and has been strongly supporting a bill to impose a five per cent tax on expat remittances.
The health minister said that the ministry is considering raising maternity and birth charges at public hospitals without providing further details about the time frame.
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