Waste of public spending, corruption key challenges
Interview with candidate Alia Al-Khalid
Kuwait Times is interviewing candidates for the upcoming parliamentary polls as part of a series examining the challenges and problems facing Kuwait. Yesterday we spoke with second constituency candidate, Alia Al-Khalid.
Khalid believes that Kuwait can be better, and this only can be done through the Kuwaitis and particularly the youth. This is a driving point of her campaign.
“The youth want reforms and change. So I want to apply the reforms and changes in practical life. My vision is based on people. I will focus on individuals to make them have clear vision and understand the benefits from these issues. People’s strength comes from their understanding and awareness. We don’t have political awareness in the community,” Khalid told the Kuwait Times.
On the Economy
“We need open minds that understand these problems and discuss them with the people,” Khalid said when asked about her views of the challenges facing the economy of Kuwait and recent changes in subsidies. “We suffer from lack of transparency, which we need to solve the issues. We should be united to understand the economic reforms to decide whether we accept it as it is, we modify it, or we refuse it. and if we refuse it, we should look for alternatives,” she added.
According to her, Kuwait has numerous laws, and these laws are not active. “I don’t want to add more laws, as the achievement is not in issuing laws but in activating laws already in existence and applying them. Economic reforms may be acceptable or need few amendments thus I can’t decide on behalf of the people. They should be aware of this issue and give their opinion,” she noted.
“For instance everybody wants to apply the electronic procedure of paperwork, as this will eliminate corruption in many public institutions. Government is obliged to apply this part of the economic reforms program. The government has great waste and we aim to rationalize spending. Public tenders are one of the spending wastes of government,” explained Khalid.
Waste and corruption
According to her the government didn’t start working on the economic reform yet, and the canceling of subsidies is not an economic reform. “There is conflict in this issue, for instance. The government considers subsidies as waste in spending, while the citizen doesn’t think this is waste. We need to connect the two parties so we then can issue a law for the whole entity,” she pointed out.
“Wasting of public funds is clear in many fields including the wrong management, the grants, road projects, airport project or the embezzlements of social security,” she said. So we should bring connection between the two parties to have a unified opinion. People should know the articles of the economic reforms paper as we are a partner in the future public projects with 40 percent. The paper also includes improving the work environment and providing work opportunities to increase production. If people were aware of all of this then they will be ready to bear the cancelation of subsidies,” highlighted Khalid.
She sees the main reason behind the problems facing Kuwait is the wrong administration. “The wrong administration is responsible for most corruption. The bad management by government didn’t allow productive persons to do their work in the correct way. We need to activate controlling role of the parliament and not just the legislation,” she concluded.