Agility begins major staff layoff drive

Kuwaiti firm Agility has launched a program that has seen between 500 and 600 employees at its offices inside and outside Kuwait laid off in the past few days, Arabic Al Qabas has reported. One official warned that this is just the beginning of the firm's major staff restructuring program, with thousands more personnel set to be laid off over the next few months, the daily said. Agility's expects a slowdown in large new contracts following the international economic crisis, with contracts not predicted to return to previous billion-dollar levels for some time, the official told the newspaper.