Nitaqat: Small firm's employees are safe.

My Kafeel had 12 employees in his spare parts shop in Jeddah including me. Last month he sent back one employee in final exit and shifted two employees to his brother’s sponsorship. Now he asked me to get ready for exit if any problem from labor office in regard to Nitaqat. Is there any problem possible from labor office?

It is a common practice Saudi Arabia, for the last three months to cut down employee strength under ten by the Small firms which are in the border line of the Nitaqat to escape the liability and obligations from Nitaqat.

Your sponsor is very intelligent and cleaver. He is trying to avoid disadvantages of Nitaqat program and want SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) privilege. The SME’s totally excluded from the Nitaqat program. The program will cover the firms which have more than nine employees. If exceeded, your sponsor compelled to appoint a Saudi employee. In order to escape from that stipulation, he restricted his employee numbers below nine.  So now your firm will not come under Nitaqat program and there are no problems from the end of Labor office. So far so good. Moreover, yesterday a confirmation come from the part of the Ministry of labor that, there is no hurdles to renew the work permit of the existing employees who are working in SME’s. 

Good Luck.