PACI gives 30 days to fix address or pay KD 100 fine

If your building was torn down, or your landlord told the authorities you’d moved out, your official address in Kuwait might already be gone from the system – and you may not even know it.

The Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) has deleted 485 residential addresses from its records. If one of them is yours, you now have a short window to fix it before it costs you money.

This comes not long after Kuwait started demolishing 263 buildings in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, a reminder of how many residential addresses can disappear from the records when old buildings come down across the country.

What exactly did PACI announce?

PACI published the decision in the official gazette, Kuwait Al-Youm. It said 485 residential addresses were taken off its records. There were two reasons behind this. Some property owners told PACI that an address was no longer valid. Others were linked to buildings that had been demolished.

Once an address is deleted, it’s as if you have no registered home address with the government. That matters more than it sounds, because your civil ID, government paperwork, and even some deliveries and official letters are tied to the address PACI has on file.

In the same gazette notice, PACI also announced something separate but related to making its services easier to reach. It said it is starting the prequalification stage for private companies that want to offer civil ID card delivery services. The idea is that once contracts are awarded to companies that meet PACI’s criteria, people won’t always need to travel to PACI’s headquarters in South Surra or its other service centres just to collect a civil ID card. That part of the announcement doesn’t have a start date yet, but it signals PACI wants to cut down queues and travel time for routine services.

So who does this affect?

This affects anyone, citizen or expat, whose residential address was one of the 485 removed. You might not get a personal notice telling you directly, so it’s worth checking your own status rather than waiting to hear from PACI.

You’re more likely to be affected if your landlord or property owner recently updated records with PACI, or if you lived in a building that was demolished. If you’re renting anywhere near an area going through redevelopment, like parts of Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh, it’s worth double-checking your address status this week rather than assuming it’s fine.

What you need to do before the deadline

You have 30 days from the date PACI made the announcement to sort this out. Here’s how:

1. Open the Sahel app (the government’s official mobile app for civil ID and residency services) and check whether your registered address is current.
2. If it needs updating, use Sahel to submit your new address along with the supporting documents PACI asks for, such as proof of your new residence.
3. If you’d rather not do it through the app, you can visit PACI in person and submit the same documents there.
4. Keep a copy or screenshot of your submission confirmation, in case you need to show you updated your address within the deadline.

If you’re not confident using government apps, the Sahel app has become the main channel for several PACI and residency services lately. We’ve covered how it now handles a lost passport certificate request too, so it’s worth getting familiar with it if you haven’t already.

What happens if you miss the deadline?

If you don’t update your address within 30 days, PACI can apply the penalty set out in Article 33 of Law No. 32/1982. That penalty is a fine of KD 100 per person. It’s not a household fine – it applies per individual affected, so a family could face more than one fine if several members are linked to the same deleted address.

Kuwait has leaned on fixed fines like this before for missed paperwork deadlines. It’s a similar structure to the KD 100 fee for a lost passport we wrote about recently – a flat cost meant to push people to act quickly rather than let records go out of date.

What this means if you live in Kuwait

For citizens, this is mostly an administrative housekeeping step, but one that can turn into a real cost if ignored. For expats, keeping your address current with PACI also tends to matter for residency paperwork and other government services that check your civil ID details.

If you’ve recently changed residence, even without being told your old address was deleted, it’s a good moment to update it anyway. Doing it now, while there’s no fine hanging over the process, is simpler than fixing it after a deadline has passed.

You can find more on how local offices are adjusting their services, including the new drive-thru residency service in Al Ahmadi, in our local news coverage.

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