Our company is deducting rest day from our annual leaves, the latest example is Feb 24, 2019 which was declared as rest day along with the holidays of Feb 25 & 26, 2019 and our company had deducted it from my annual leave. Last year (2018) Kuwait government declared two rest days due to heavy rains and flooding, those days were also deducted from my annual leave, Similarly rest days declared with the Eid holidays are also deducted from my annual leave. This pay deduction is not only for me, this is for all employees of the company. As for me I understand 30 days are the annual leaves as per the Kuwait Labour Law but our company is giving us 24 + 6 days annual leave, where 6 days are adjusted against any rest days declared by the Kuwait government and we are essentially left with 24 annual leaves only. Is this legal for the company to do so? Please clarify if this is correct, if not then what action would you suggest for us to take.

Name withheld

Answer: Unfortunately, the company is totally wrong in the way it handles annual leave vis-a-vis of official holidays and weekends. Weekends and official holidays fall within a paid leave are treated in two different ways. According to the Labour law, you are entitled to only 30 days paid leave with the only benefit in this regard being that all the official holidays and weekends are added to your leave but you are not paid for these nor is any amount deducted from your salary for these holidays being added to your leave.

For example, when you take 30 days annual leave and 4 weekends plus three Eid holidays full within those 30 days, you will be entitled for 37 days. However, if the company wants you to take only a total of 30 days off, then you will have a balance of seven days paid leave which you can avail of later or added to your next annual leave.

In both cases, your annual leave salary will be calculated as follows: monthly salary divided by 26 and then multiplied by your leave (total number of days after deducting the weekends and official holidays). In the preceding case therefore, if your leave salary will be monthly salary divide by 26 multiplied by 30.

However, if you are given a total of 30 days off (including the total 7 weekends and official holidays) then your leave salary will be monthly salary divided by 26 multiplied by 23. In this case seven days of your annual leave will remain in balance you can therefore, see that although you may get the extra days off, you don’t get any extra payment for these days.

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