Water cannons used to disperse Chinese strikers
Kuwait, Politics, 10/21/1997

Kuwaiti special forces used water cannon to disperse hundreds of Chinese construction workers who grouped in a strike for the second time on October 20 to demand payment of their delayed salaries.

At the beginning security patrols failed to disperse the gathering, when the workers attempted to attack the first secretary at the Chinese embassy.

The workers decided to proceed to the Chinese embassy, but they were dispersed when special forces arrived on the scene and used water cannons.

A number of senior security officials, including the commander of the Mina Abdullah police station and the director of the Ahmadi patrols department, were present at the location during the strike.

In another development the under-secretary of the ministry of planning for administrative and financial affairs, Hind Al Sabeeh, stressed on October 20 the ministry's implementation of all laws and regulations by the civil service commission regarding regulation of working hours

A1 Sabeeh said that the ministry will not be lenient towards implementing law and regulations regarding working hours and controlling unlicensed leaving of the work place "on all the employees of the ministry to implement the principle of justice."

Some 200 ministry employees, out of 800, staged a strike on October 20 morning protesting an administrative decision number 211/1997 regarding the regulation of working hours and punishing tardy employees.

The decision she signed was first implemented on October. It was agreed upon by the ministry's council of under-secretaries, she said, stressing that she's only an executive authority.

She also denied that the decision will forbid employees from getting a license to take their children from schools, saying that "giving a license is up to each employee's superior."

In a statement, some of the workers complained about the decision and expressed opposition to the method of punishing tardiness and asked that the decision be implemented on all the ministry's employees.

Under the new decision, any tardiness exceeding three hours a month will be punished by a deduction of one-day pay with a maximum of six hours. The previous law stated that the deduction comes out the worker's vacations, not from his salary.

Al Sabeeh, who was appointed in September by an Amiri decree according to a nomination by the minister of planning and minister of state administrative affairAli Al Zumai.

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