Kuwait has appointed new ministers for the electricity and public works ministries following the resignation of the previous Minister for Electricity & Water and Public Works Ahmed al-Jassar.

The current Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs, Mohammad Abdullah al-Mubarak al-Sabah, has been appointed as the new minister for the Ministry of Electricity & Water (MEW).

Yasser Hassan Abul, the current Minister of State for Housing Affairs, has been appointed as the new minister for the Ministry of Public Works (MPW).

The previous dual-minister Al-Jassar resigned on 29 September after being given a two-year jail sentence for improprieties regarding the award of power contracts by the MEW in 2007. Al-Jassar was one of the members on a MEW committee that awarded contracts for 500MW emergency power generation allegedly without oversight from the Central Tenders Committee (CTC), the SAB or the National Assembly. Some of the second-hand gas turbines procured were unusable, wasting public funds.

The new ministers both come into ministries undertaking significant programmes to expand Kuwait’s utilities and infrastructure sectors.

MEW estimates that an additional 10,500MW of electricity capacity and 220 million imperial gallons a day (MIGD) of desalination capacity will be required by 2022 to meet the forecast peak power demand growth. In August, Kuwait’s Finance Ministry approved KD3bn ($9.9bn)-worth of power, desalination and wastewater projects.

MPW is also undertaking road and sewage projects worth billions of dollars. MEED recently reported that local contractors had submitted low bids totalling $711m for three packages on the Al-Ghouse road upgrade project in Kuwait.