I am from India. I got a release and joined my current company on July 17, 2014.

1) I am eligible for 30 days paid leave but unfortunately I cannot take my annual leave this year due to some personal problems. Is it possible to ask my company to pay by leave salary without taking annual leave.

2) My company opened the Kuwait office in June 2014. If somebody wants to go on vacations my superiors are saying that the company policy is to give the leave salary only after when we came back from leave, they will not give leave salary before we start the leave.

As we understand, according to Kuwait Labor Law it is required that the leave salary should be paid before people go on leave.

In this situation if I want to take leave and if company insists on not paying the leave salary before I start my leave what should I do?

Name withheld Answer: Article 71 of the Kuwait Labor Law, enacted on Feb 20, 2010, clearly lays down that the employee must be paid his annual leave salary before he proceeds on leave.

You must draw the attention of your superiors to this law because no company can have any law which is against any article of the Kuwait Labor Law.

If the company insists on following its policy you can file a complaint against the company with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, through the Labor Office in your area. Secondly on the issue of “encashing” your annual leave, the Labor Law says that can employee can’t give up his right to take the annual leave, with or without payment.

Having said that, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor doesn’t interfere in the issue if both the company and the employee reach an agreement on the issue and the worker only takes the leave payment instead of going on leave. But the company can’t be forced to decide in favor of the employee who doesn’t want to go on leave. A mutual agreement is required to encash the leave.

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