KUWAIT CITY, Nov 1: Indians with more than 184,200 workers have become the largest community among foreigners employed by Kuwait’s private sector, the social affairs and labour minister said on Saturday.

Egyptians come second with 183,000 workers while Bangladeshis total 116,000, Faisal al-Hajji told Al-Qabas daily.

Hajji said the total number of foreigners employed in the private sector reached 725,000 on June 30 this year, 52 per cent from the Indian sub-continent.

Other nationalities include 64,400 from Pakistan, 42,300 Syrians and 42,000 from Iran, in addition to 20,200 from the Philippines, 15,800 Lebanese, 11,000 from Sri Lanka and 10,500 Jordanians.

The figure does not include foreigners working in the public sector, estimated at 100,000 and some 300,000 domestic workers mostly from India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

Nor does it include hundreds of thousands of family members accompanying their sponsors in the oil-rich emirate.

According to official figures released by the planning ministry, the foreign population of Kuwait rose 5.8 per cent in 2002 to reach the 1.5 million mark for the first time in 12 years.

The report said that Kuwait’s total population at the end of last year reached 2.42 million — 37.1 per cent Kuwaitis, 36.2 per cent Asians and 22.2 per cent Arabs.

Over two-thirds of expatriates, or one million, are male, more than the total population of Kuwaiti citizens, the report added.

Foreign families are expected to increase this year after the interior ministry relaxed conditions for expatriates to bring in their wives and children.

Britons, other Europeans, and North Americans make up fewer than 20,000 of the population. —AFP