Change in visa status from Project visa to Private company visa

This news has been read 7602 times!

In 2012, I entered Kuwait on a farm visa. Later I got a job in a private company and the farm visa was changed to a private company visa as “Labour supervisor”. After two years, I have now got another offer and have joined a three-year project. My current sponsor has provided me a project visa after changing my designation to “Technician – Mechanic “. After this job if I want to change my residence from project to normal private company visa, will it be possible ?

Name withheld

Answer: We talked on the same issue last week — although the question had been sent from a different angle — and we stressed what is being considered these days is whether you were hired for the project from abroad or you joined the firm on a local transfer.

As you joined the firm on a local transfer, you should not have any problems (and that too without having to leave the country) transferring to the company you wish to join. It now doesn’t matter that you came to the country on a farm visa. That is now history as you are current on a private sector residence which is being converted to a government project residence. For you information, we are bringing the following to your attention.

About almost an year ago — in March, 2015 —after issuing a similar verdict on Jan 11 of the same year, Manpower Public Authority Director Jamal Al-Dousary issued an administrative decision allowing expatriates working on government projects to transfer their visas from one sponsor to another.

This made things easy for only some of the expatriates but a lot of them misunderstand the situation and think that there is a blanket ban on transfer of government project visas But this is not the case and this is where a clarification comes into play and sets the ground rules for the transfers that are allowed. Workers on government projects were in the past only allowed to transfer their visas to different companies but under the sponsorship of the same employer after the completion of their contracts.

But now the new decision clarifies that laborers contracted locally from the private sector or transferring from dependent visas can transfer to other sponsors according to the previous conditions, which are:

1. Conclusion of the project’s tenure

2. Working for at least one year for the first sponsor

3. Getting the sponsor’s approval for transferring.So, this makes it very clear that if you were contracted from abroad for this government project then you can’t transfer to another sponsor (your length of service no longer makes any difference) but if you transferred to this project locally from another sponsor / company then your transfer is allowed.

In the end, as a result of the above decision, we would again like to stress that as you joined the firm on a local transfer you should have no difficulty in transferring your residence to the new firm after you complete the project or after one year with the sponsor’s approval.

This news has been read 7602 times!

Related Articles

Back to top button

Advt Blocker Detected

Kindly disable the Ad blocker

Verified by MonsterInsights