Work permit tied to residence

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I am a resigned employee of a private company waiting indefinitely to go on exit after receiving ‘final settlement’. My ‘work permit’ was cancelled in April 2017 soon after the notice period while visa and civil ID is valid up to Feb, 2018. Kindly advise whether it is permitted to travel outside and reenter Kuwait with the visa I am holding now. I have an important family function to attend back home.

Name withheld

Answer: The residence permit is tied to the work permit. This means that if your work permit is cancelled so is your residence permit. However, after the cancellation of the residence permit, a temporary one (visa 14) is given to you to enable you wind up your activities and leave the country.

If you still have your civil ID card with you and the pasted residence permit in your passport is not stamped cancelled, that means your work permit is still intact.

On the other hand, if the work permit was actually cancelled but they failed to stamp your passport cancelled as well as failed to apply for a temporary visa for you, then we are afraid that you are living in Kuwait illegally and must take steps to rectify the situation.

Failing to do this, you risk being deported if you are caught in addition to paying fines for the number of days you have illegally stayed in Kuwait. As for travelling outside Kuwait and returning forget about it if indeed your work permit has been cancelled.

The validity or otherwise of your residence permit can be checked from the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) online. If you check and it is intact, it means, your work permit has not been cancelled as alleged and in that case you can travel outside Kuwait and return.

Kindly send your queries to [email protected] or [email protected]
Kindly go through our archives and refrain from sending repeated questions

This news has been read 23662 times!