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The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, through the Qiwa platform, has launched an initiative aimed at regularizing the status of professional workers recorded as “absent from work,” starting from 18 September 2025 AD. The initiative enables these workers to transfer legally to a new employer. This initiative is part of the ministry’s efforts to safeguard contractual rights for all parties, enhance the attractiveness of the labor market, and promote higher compliance levels.
The ministry clarified that the initiative includes several instances, including: workers whose status changed to “absent from work” after the end of the 60-day grace period due to work discontinuation; workers whose status changed to “absent from work” following the expiration or termination of a documented employment contract; and expatriate workers with prior absence reports issued before the launch of the “Work Discontinuation” initiative.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development also specified several conditions for benefiting from the initiative, including: the new employer’s commitment to paying any outstanding fees for the expatriate worker’s employment permit, and that the worker must have completed a continuous period of at least 12 months within the Kingdom prior to the work discontinuation or the contract’s expiration.
This initiative represents an extension of the ministry’s efforts to regulate the labor market and provide innovative solutions that contribute to building an attractive and compliant labor market.
