So your employer hands you a notice letter, or maybe you’re the one resigning. What happens next isn’t left to guesswork – Kuwait’s Labour Law spells it out, and the Public Authority of Manpower (PAM) just put out a plain-language advisory to remind everyone of the rules.
If you’ve ever wondered whether you can still job-hunt while serving notice, or what you’re owed when your contract winds down, this is worth five minutes of your time.
The short version
- Employers ending an indefinite contract must give proper notice: three months for workers paid monthly, one month for others.
- During that notice period, you can take one full day off a week – or up to eight hours a week – to look for a new job, and you still get paid for that time.
- End-of-service payment is based on your length of service and how you’re paid, as long as you meet the legal conditions.
- PAM’s message is simple: “end of service is not the end of rights.”
What the notice period actually means
Under Article 44 of the Labour Law, an employer can’t just end an indefinite-term contract overnight. There’s a legal notice period that has to be respected – three months if you’re on a monthly salary, one month if you’re paid on another basis (daily, weekly, by the piece, and so on), unless some other legal provision applies.
PAM describes this as binding, not optional. The idea is to give both sides time for an orderly handover rather than a sudden exit.
Can you job-hunt while serving notice?
Yes, and this is the part a lot of workers don’t realise. While you’re serving an employer-initiated notice period, the law gives you time off specifically to look for other work – either a full day each week or up to eight hours spread across the week. Your employer still has to pay you for those hours, so it’s not unpaid leave.
This matters if you’re on the market already. It’s worth checking Sahel’s own channels or asking your HR department how they expect this time to be logged, since practice can vary slightly between companies.
What about the end-of-service payment itself?
Article 51 covers this. You’re entitled to an end-of-service payment calculated on your period of service and how you were remunerated, provided you tick the eligibility boxes the law sets out. PAM didn’t publish new figures or formulas in this advisory – it’s a reminder of the existing rule, not a change to it. If you want to work out roughly what you’re owed, our breakdown of how indemnity is actually calculated walks through the maths.
What this means if you’re an expat or a citizen working here
For expat workers especially, the end of a job is often tangled up with visa status, so knowing your rights on notice and payment matters more than it might for someone changing jobs back home.