Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has appealed to Egypt and India with a request to provide technical staff to work on oil facilities in the country during the recently announced general strike of the local oil industry workers, Sputnik News reported.

Wafaa al-Zaabi, CEO of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), warned that the strike would cost the national oil sector between $36m and $48m in daily losses, informed the Anadolu Agency. KPC’s CEO added that the corporation had contacted the Egyptian General Authority for Petroleum and the Indian Oil Corporation with a view “to providing Kuwait with the necessary technical labor to operate the oil installations during the strike”.

The number of foreign workers to be involved in Kuwait is yet undecided.

The open-end strike is expected to start on April 17th. Kuwait’s trade unions organized the strike to protest cuts in benefits and wages for oil and gas workers. The Kuwaiti government had decided to lower wages and benefits for 20,000 public employees as the Kuwait’s economy, highly dependent on oil, suffered significant losses amid falling oil prices.