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Tuesday 16 June 2009 (22 Jumada al-Thani 1430)
 

Law and You by Mohammed Jaber Nader
 
 

A.S.T. I want to inquire about the rules regarding paid vacation. In case of some emergency or if there is some important work to be done, an employee asks his employer to give him leave for two or three days. After getting consent of the employer, is this legal for the employer if he deducts the equivalent days from basic wage of the employee? Please explain if this deduction is correct. What are rules for such deduction?

The vacation period is to be agreed upon between the parties. It must be 21 days per annum. Above that any period may be agreed upon. The law has put a minimum of 21 days per annum for each of the first five years and thirty days for each year of service after that. To agree upon less would be illegal.Yes, your employer has the choice either to deduct this from your salary. He may instead deduct it from your vacation entitlement. There is another way to take extra leave time: by deducting it from your service period. For the absent period, you will not get any salary, vacation entitlement or end-of-service benefit.
 

W.A. Please let me know what is the standing of the no-objection certificate (NOC). If I leave my job now and they give me exit to my country without providing NOC, when can I come back to Saudi Arabia?

You will have to stay one year before returning to work with another employer.
 

W.K. I am an expatriate working in Saudi Arabia who has worked at a company for 14 years. Can I call my sister to Saudi Arabia on a family visa? She is almost alone in my native country. Recently my mother died and there is no one to take care of her. She is unmarried.

The rule is that you may do that only if you are the sole supporter of your sister. If not, that would be difficult. Anyway try with the Passport Department, through a professional Public Service Passport-Facilitator (Muaqqib). Contact your consulate. They may know such a Muaqqib.
 

W.K. I am an expatriate working in Saudi Arabia who has worked at a company for 14 years. Can I call my sister to Saudi Arabia on a family visa? She is almost alone in my native country. Recently my mother died and there is no one to take care of her. She is unmarried.

The rule is that you may do that only if you are the sole supporter of your sister. If not, that would be difficult. Anyway try with the Passport Department, through a professional Public Service Passport-Facilitator (Muaqqib). Contact your consulate. They may know such a Muaqqib.
 

A.J.A. My wife is working in a private clinic and there they are implementing very strange rules of salary deduction: One hour late to work is a SR100 salary deduction; going home 30 minutes or more early means a half-day salary deduction; a half-day absence is a one-day salary deduction; and two days of salary deduction is imposed on one day of absence. Is this legal?

Probably. It depends on whether this policy has been applied in accordance to the Internal Regulation of Work (IRW) and the Ministry of Labor has approved the hospital for this policy. If the hospital does not have this approval then it is violating labor law. There are stiff penalties if the clinic has not received this approval.

 

K.A. I have completed 13 years and eight months of service with my company. I signed an annual contract, which renews automatically every year. I informed my company before the completion of my 13th year that I wanted to resign at the termination of that annual contract. The owner of the company asked me to stay for a further eight months. I am getting basic salary, housing allowance, a car provided by the company, bonus per annum and family medical coverage from an insurance company. Please explain to me how my end of service benefit (ESB) will be calculated for 13 years and eight months of service.

Your ESB should be calculated on the basis of the total of your last month’s wage (LMW). LMW is the total of your monthly salary plus all of the other allowances that you mentioned, including your bonus, a SR1,000 for your car and what the company pays to the insurance company.

As ESB you should get half LMW for each of your first five years of service and full LMW for each of the remaining years. Parts of a year served should be given proportionately. ESB for the remaining part of a year may be calculated by the day as follows: LMW divides by 365.25 days of the year multiplied by number of days served.

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