Employer Violations and their Fines in Saudi Arabia

It is a common practice in Saudi Arabia That many private and public companies withheld the passport of employees with themselves and didn’t give them back until Final Exit of employees. Mostly they do this to govern the employees and some of the illegally blackmail their employees but whatever complications are it is common in Saudi Arabia. The main thing is weather it is legal or not to keep employees passports most of expatriates are from poor countries and didn’t know what the laws states they just keep on doing work.

According to Council of Ministers resolution No. (166) dated 12-4-1421H which clearly didn’t allow anyone to hold your passport. Which means sponsors who takes your passport and keep with himself is doing illegal thing. But in case if sponsor is blackmailing you using your passport and did not give you back than what thing your can do to recover your passport.

How to Recover your Passport if employee not gives to holder:

Why someone want his passport obviously it his own passport for what reason you want your passport back such if you want to change sponsorship or don’t want to continue the job. In order to get your passport back you have to play some legal moves and some tricky moves every sensible employee knows that he is in sponsorship of sponsor and didn’t want to get in fight with him. So let see how to do that.

1. First try to check the authority of sponsor upon you it is easily be done by checking nitaqat category of sponsor if is in Low category such as RED or Yellow than you could transfer sponsorship even without sponsor permission but you still need passport let see how to recover passport.
2.  Try to make excuses tell him that you need to check passport for information its expiry date whatever excuse you have to make to get it back.
3. After doing excuses if you didn’t get it back turn over to labor office to pursue legal things, file complaint in labor office but it still seem difficult as labor office may takes more than 30 days to take any action.
4. The last is to Trick you sponsor, just go to police station and tell them you lost your passport if police didn’t find it go to  your embassy and get a new replacement of passport. Make the action only on your own responsibility I am just giving information to educate you.

The rule against sponsors is really strict but still these thing are ongoing on daily basis as in 2015 several new fines were introduces against sponsor such as in case sponsor keep your passport with himself may face 2000 SAR if he didn’t give you a copy of contract SR 5000 will imposed on Sponsor.