News :: Kuwait

Amir calls for special Assembly session

KUWAIT: HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah on Saturday issued an Amiri decree to hold an extraordinary National Assembly session on Monday to discuss the Amiri grant. The first item of the decree called for holding the National Assembly session July 31, while the second states that the Prime Minister is responsible for informing the National Assembly over the decree, which will also be published in the official gazette. The government had earlier referred a draft law on the Amiri grant to Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly MP Ahmad Al-Mulaifi with the request for an extraordinary session on Monday to discuss this issue.

According to the draft law “an Amiri grant of 200 dinars will be paid once to each citizen and entire amount will be paid from the reserve fund of the state and added to the expenditure of 2006/2007.” Sources say Al-Mulaifi recently called Deputy Premier, Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Dr Ismael Al-Shatti to confirm that 25 MPs, who are currently in the country, have conveyed their willingness to attend the extraordinary session.

Meanwhile, MP Abdulwahed Al-Awadi, who launched a campaign to collect the signatures of MPs to ensure their attendance at Sunday’s session, said “such a generous gesture from HH the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, who is always keen to ease the burden on the shoulders of citizen, is not strange.”
Al-Awadi stressed prices of consumer goods should be closely monitored and greedy merchants should not be given an opportunity to misuse the Amiri grant, saying “the government must establish shareholding investment companies and shares of such companies must be distributed to citizens to encourage them to save.”

By Raed Yousef - Special to the Arab Times and Agencies