Your Gulf employer owes you: end-of-service gratuity and unpaid wages, country by country, and how to claim from Nepal

A 55-year-old from Pokhara told the Kathmandu Post this morning how six years at a supply company in Qatar ended. The company shut in the war disruption, he came home in June, and he left with a sentence that a lot of families will hear this Dashain: "I left without my gratuity, and the company still owes me wages." He was earning about Rs 50,000 a month. Six years of that carries a legal end-of-service payment worth several months' salary, and it is sitting in Doha.

The same paper counted labour approvals down 52% since the war began, and in May it found 36 Nepalis at one Qatari contractor unpaid for eight months, owed QAR 15,000 to 40,000 each. This post is for the worker in that position and the family waiting at home: what the law in each Gulf country says you are owed, in rupees, how long you have, where the claim is actually filed, and what Nepal's own system can and cannot do about it.

What each country's law says you are owed

Gratuity, end-of-service benefit, indemnity, nihayat al-khidma: different names for one thing, a statutory payment on leaving after at least a year's service. Each country's rule, from the statute or the government's own portal.

Two details in that table decide the rupee amount. The first is the base. The UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman pay on basic wage only, so a contract that shows QAR 1,000 basic plus QAR 800 of food and housing calculates on the 1,000; the split on the contract matters more than the total. Saudi Arabia is the exception: Article 2 of its law defines wage as the "actual wage", basic plus allowances, which many calculator sites built for India get wrong. The second is resignation. A worker whose company closed, or whose contract ended, was terminated, and the full rate applies. Saudi's Article 87 even grants the full award to someone who quits "due to a force majeure beyond his control".

Kuwait's statute is published only as a scanned PDF, so the formula above is the one every commentary agrees on rather than a quoted article; treat the resignation tiers as the standard reading. Oman's separate savings scheme, which would move expat gratuity to a government fund, has been pushed to July 2027, so the employer still owes the money there.

The number in rupees

Worked at the wages Nepali workers actually get, converted at NRB's buying rates for 26 September 2026: AED 41.66, QAR 42.00, SAR 40.75, KWD 497.27. The wage floors are the ones Nepal's own embassies attest: AED 1,000 basic for the UAE since June 2025, SAR 1,000 basic plus SAR 300 food for Saudi under the January 2026 agreement, and Qatar's statutory QAR 1,000 basic.

My arithmetic, rounded. The SAR 1,300 is the low end of what workers at Sendan International were earning when it collapsed; the Kuwait wage is an assumption because no attested floor was found. Add the unpaid months. The Intertectra workers were owed eight months' salary plus food allowance and two years of overtime, which is why their individual claims ran to QAR 40,000, close to Rs 17 lakh. Against a family's finances the gratuity alone is a Dashain-and-a-half; the arrears are a year of income.

Every clock is one year, and it is already running

The limitation periods are short and they do not pause when you fly home.

• UAE: "No claim for any rights due will be heard after one year from the date of violation," per the government portal.
• Qatar: Article 10 lapses the right to sue "by the expiry of one year from the date of expiry of the contract". The same article exempts worker suits from court fees and orders them heard "with urgency".
• Saudi Arabia: Article 234 bars labour courts from hearing claims "upon the lapse of 12 months from the date of termination of the employment relation", unless the court accepts a justification or the employer admits the debt. Older guides cite Article 222; that article is now repealed.
• Kuwait and Oman: one year, under Kuwait's Article 144 as commentaries read it and Oman's Article 9 from the date of entitlement.

Nepal's own Act has a kinder clock, and it is easy to misread. Section 60 of the Foreign Employment Act 2064 lets a returned worker complain "within one year after the date of his or her arrival in Nepal". That clock starts at Tribhuvan Airport. But, as the next section explains, the complaint it governs is against the Nepali agency, and it recovers nothing from Doha or Riyadh. For the money the Gulf employer owes, the Gulf clock is the only one that counts.

Where the claim is actually filed

The employer's country, through its labour ministry, before any court. Each has a free amicable-settlement stage with a deadline that forces the file forward.

One correction to the guides in circulation: Musaned is Saudi Arabia's platform for domestic workers. A company employee, which is most Nepalis there, uses HRSD's settlement service, not Musaned.

The document that carries every one of these claims is the contract, plus payslips, bank statements showing which months were paid, and the ID card. Photograph all of it before anything goes wrong. Qatar's wage protection system and Saudi's equivalent leave a bank trail of every transfer, and the absence of a transfer in a given month is the evidence.

When the company has already closed

This is the current scenario, and it changes the arithmetic in three ways.

The company's closure is a termination. Full gratuity, no resignation discount, everywhere. The Sendan and Intertectra cases show what usually happens next, though: the embassy's stated first priority is repatriation. Nepal's labour counsellor in Riyadh put it plainly when 469 Nepalis were stranded: "Our first priority now is to send the workers back home. To recover the unpaid salaries and entitlements, legal proceedings must be initiated." Getting home and getting paid are two different files, and the second one is the worker's to open.

Qatar has a fund; it is small. The Workers' Support and Insurance Fund pays a worker's entitlement once a Dispute Settlement Committee or court has ruled, then recovers from the employer, financed partly by 60% of work-permit fees. The cap, per Migrant-Rights.org's reading of the 2022 amendment, is three months' salary up to QAR 20,000 for an active company and two months up to QAR 12,000 for a closed one, and only about a quarter of complaints reach the committee at all. For a worker owed QAR 40,000 that is a floor, not a settlement.

Bahrain's post-2024 money is safe; everyone else's is an unsecured debt. Because Bahraini employers have paid gratuity contributions into the government's SIO monthly since March 2024, a closed employer cannot take that portion with it. Oman's equivalent scheme is not live until 2027. In the UAE, Qatar, Saudi and Kuwait the gratuity is a claim against a company that may have no assets, which is why filing early, before the liquidation queue forms, matters more than filing perfectly.

Filing from Nepal is possible, on paper. Qatar's Article 66 allows wages to be "paid to the attorney appointed by the worker in writing", the Doha embassy told the Intertectra workers to leave a power of attorney with legal representatives if they flew, and the 2026 amendment allows virtual committee hearings. Amnesty's 2019 study of the committees is the caution: workers who went home before a decision largely got nothing. If you are still in the country, file before the exit stamp. If you have already landed, the power of attorney plus the embassy's labour section is the route, and the Non-Resident Nepali Association chapters have been the practical support in recent cases.

What Nepal's system can do, and what it cannot

The Foreign Employment Act builds a system around the recruiting agency, because that is the party inside Nepal's jurisdiction. Reading the sections against the current situation:

• Section 68 gives the labour attaché a duty to "assist in the resolution" of disputes between a worker and an employer and to arrange repatriation of a worker "helpless in the course of foreign employment". This is the official who should walk you into MOHRE or HRSD. Attachés are posted where 5,000 or more workers have been sent, which covers the Gulf.
• Sections 35 and 36 let the Department of Foreign Employment inquire into an employer that "has not fulfilled the contractual obligation" and bring the worker home, and let the worker "or his or her agent" complain for compensation. The remedy is an order to the licensee, the Nepali agency, "to provide compensation for all expenses incurred in going for foreign employment", backed by the agency's deposit. Recruitment costs, not wages. The agency refund post walks through that claim.
• Section 64, the Foreign Employment Tribunal, tries offences under the Act by agents and agencies; it has no power over a Qatari company.
• Sections 32 and 33, the Welfare Fund, pays for skills training, repatriation of the stranded and the dead, disability and death compensation, and returnee employment programmes. There is no head for unpaid wages. The foreign employment insurance post covers what the fund and the mandatory policy do pay.

The practical Nepal-side tools are the Foreign Employment Call Centre on 1141 (toll-free, and reachable on Viber and WhatsApp from abroad), and the online complaint portal the ministry launched in July 2026 so that a worker in Sarlahi no longer has to travel to Kathmandu to file against an agent. Both are built for agency fraud. Use them for that, and for reaching the attaché, and do not expect either to produce a Gulf employer's cheque. The 2026 Nepal-Saudi labour agreement commits both sides to "ensuring access to justice for workers", which is the right sentence and, so far, a sentence.

Tax, and bringing it home

The good news is clean. Income Tax Act Section 2 makes a person resident only if their normal abode is Nepal or they spent 183 days here in a 365-day window, and Section 6 taxes a non-resident only on income "having income source in Nepal". A worker who spent the year in Qatar is non-resident, and the wages and gratuity are outside Nepal's net; the foreign income post covers the residency test in detail. Formal remittance carries no withholding. One myth to drop: law-firm blogs cite a "Section 10 exemption for foreign employment", but Section 10(b) exempts pay for "employment in the governmental service of a foreign country". A private contractor's wages are protected by non-residence, not by Section 10.

The wrinkle is the year of return. Land in June, stay, and by December you have 183 days and are resident for the income year that began in Shrawan. On the statute's face, worldwide income for a resident is assessable, and no IRD guidance carving out migrant earnings was found. A gratuity that arrives in Kartik after a Jestha return is the case to raise with an accountant before filing, particularly if it is large.

Getting the money here: cash up to USD 5,000 without declaration, anything above declared at customs, and the bank channel for the real amount because it creates the record the returnee checklist explains you will want. Section 69 of the Foreign Employment Act asks for savings to be repatriated through a bank and expressly allows carrying them in person. Once home, the one instrument built for this money is the Foreign Employment Savings Bond, which paid 7.5% on the 2087 issue and is open to workers "who have returned from employment outside the country for six months", meaning within six months of return. No 2026 issue has been announced as of late September; a worker home since June is inside the window until December if one opens. What to do with the lump sum once it lands, debt first, buffer second, the rest phased, is the Rs 20 lakh decision tree.

What you actually need to know

1. The gratuity is statutory and it is on the last wage. Three weeks a year in Qatar, 21 days in the UAE, half a month of total wage in Saudi, 15 days in Kuwait, a month in Oman; six years is roughly Rs 1.5 to 2 lakh at Nepali wage levels, before any unpaid months. A closed company means termination and the full rate.
2. One year, filed in the Gulf, with the attaché's help. MOHRE, Qatar's Ministry of Labour, HRSD's friendly settlement or Kuwait's PAM, ideally before the exit stamp, otherwise by power of attorney; the Foreign Employment Call Centre on 1141 reaches the embassy but the Department can only make the Nepali agency pay.
3. The money is tax-free if you earned it as a non-resident, and the bond is waiting for it. Remit through a bank, watch the 183-day line in the year you return, and use the six-month window for the 7.5% Foreign Employment Savings Bond if an issue opens.

Owed wages or gratuity somewhere in the Gulf and not sure which of these clocks applies? Email parjanya57@gmail.com with the country, the contract dates and the basic wage, and I'll send back the formula filled in.

This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the earning and remittance section.