Expats vote Kuwait the worst location in the entire world

2016 is the third year running for Kuwait’s unenviable position as the worst expat destination worldwide, with the result based on all the necessities for enjoying life overseas.

Losses compared with last year were made in all the Expat Insider survey’s categories, from family life through ease of settling in, personal finance and working abroad to the essential quality of life section. Even though the entire Persian Gulf region’s main destinations were also rated at the bottom of the table, the result for Kuwait is dismal, to say the least.

Only Bahrain and Oman managed inclusion in the global top 15 countries’ ease of settling in index, whist Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar ranked 66th, 67th and 61st out of the 67 countries surveyed. In the working abroad index, Bahrain and Oman again managed to be rated within the top 20, with the UAE scraping a spot just above the global average. Saudi, Kuwait and Qatar were again relegated to the bottom 20 in the table.

One reason given for the Gulf States’ poor performance in the survey was the ongoing political instability at present common across the whole of the Middle East. Although, as yet, the Gulf States are comparatively peaceful, it’s obvious expats working in the majority of the emirates are worried about their own security. The survey’s personal finance and working abroad indexes showed that money and career advancement were the major reasons for working in the region, outperforming the obvious negatives when the decision to relocate was made.

More bad news for expats in Kuwait broke at the beginning of the week with a government announcement that the price of petrol would rise by more than 80 per cent, beginning almost immediately. Also trending online was a report warning expats of scams being practiced by unlicensed domestic worker employment offices in the emirate.

The scammers, it seems, operate on social media, offering reliable housemaids at good prices to expats working in the city. The scam involves delivering the domestic workers, being paid for the service and waiting a short while before instructing the housemaids to abscond in order to be sold on to another household. According to media reports, there are a good number of these bogus agencies operating in Kuwait.

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