‘Sponsor’s duty to provide food, clothing for worker’ ; PAM nods new rules

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KUWAIT CITY, May 16 : The Minister of Justice, Jamal Al-Jalawi, issued Ministerial Decision No. 22/2022, regarding the executive regulations of Law No. 68/2015 related to domestic workers, amending some articles of the old regulation and adding others, and it will enter into force as of May 15, 2022, reports Al-Qabas daily. In confirmation of what was published by the daily on April 28, the Public Authority for Manpower approved, in Article 38 of the new regulation, the conditions for transferring a domestic worker from one employer to another, based on a number of reasons such as the death of the employer, in case of divorce of couples, losing the eligibility conditions for the employer, proof of committing an act, statement or gesture with a sexual connotation.

The regulation specified in Article Three – Clause Five, a new condition that must be met to issue licenses for offices to practice the profession of recruiting domestic workers from abroad, which is “to submit an unconditional, irrevocable letter of financial guarantee, valid for payment in full, in his name for the benefit of the authority, from a local bank an amount of 40,000 dinars for offices and institutions, and 100,000 dinars for companies,” which was not specified in the previous regulation.

The new regulation prevented deduction of any amount from the worker’s financial dues in any case, preserving his/her rights and obligating the employer to “feed the domestic worker, clothe him/her, treat and nurse him/her.”

The workforce also raised the minimum wage for the domestic worker to 75 dinars per month. In Article 35, the authority prohibited “filing of an absconding report against the domestic worker after submitting a complaint to the competent department, provided that he/she is registered with the migrant worker shelter center, and the ban is considered to be lifted two months after the complaint is settled or referred to the competent judiciary,” in order to achieve more protection for workers.

According to Article 31 the employer who is late in paying the wages of his domestic worker on the seventh day of the due month, he will have to pay 10 dinars for each month, in addition to the wages due. The fifth item includes new conditions for issuing office licenses, starting with submitting a letter of guarantee of 40,000 dinars in the event “the company opens branches for each branch, except for state-owned companies, provided that it is valid for two years from the submission of the application, and that it is committed to renewing it two months before the expiry date of the application.

The law stipulates annual leave of not less than 30 days with pay after spending 11 months at work; a paid weekly rest of 24 consecutive hours after every six working days and overtime hours which should not exceed two hours per day and a half-day wage is due for the overtime work.

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