Saudi Qiwa Contract 2026: Claim Unpaid Salary Direct

Your Saudi Salary Became a Court Order on 6 August — But Only If Three Things on Your Contract Are Correct

A worker in Riyadh has not been paid for six weeks. He has been told to wait, that the money is coming, that the company has a problem with a client. He has heard this before. Last year he went to the labour office, filled in a form, and waited four months.

As of 6 August 2026, that same worker no longer needs the labour office. His salary clause is now an enforceable instrument, and he can file directly against his employer at the Ministry of Justice. That is a genuine, significant change — and it will do nothing for him unless three specific things on his contract are correct.

This article is about both halves of that sentence.

What changed in the Saudi Qiwa contract in 2026?
From 6 August 2026, all indefinite and open-ended employment contracts moved onto Saudi Arabia’s unified Qiwa contract. The wage clause in that contract is directly enforceable: if wages go unpaid, the worker files an enforcement request through the Ministry of Justice’s Najiz portal, without first going through the labour office or labour court.

What actually happened on 6 August

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development rolled the new contract model out on the Qiwa platform in three phases. The first, from 6 October 2025, applied to new contracts and to updates of existing ones. The second, from 6 March 2026, captured fixed-term contracts as they expired and were renewed or extended. The third, effective 6 August 2026, extends the standardised agreement to every worker on an indefinite or open-ended contract.

That third phase was the last one outstanding. The system is now fully in place across the labour market.

The core of it is an integration between two government platforms. The MHRSD’s Qiwa portal and the Ministry of Justice’s Najiz platform are joined so that wage clauses recorded on Qiwa are legally enforceable directly before the Kingdom’s enforcement courts — allowing workers to bypass the traditional labour dispute channels and file wage claims through Najiz instead.

Once both parties agree a contract on Qiwa, the wage clause is assigned an execution number. That number converts a salary promise into an executable payment instrument.

In plain language: the amount written in your Qiwa contract stops being a claim you have to prove and becomes an amount the court can act on.

How the Najiz route works, day by day

The thresholds are precise, and they are the part worth memorising.

If an employer fails to pay wages, the employee can submit an enforcement request through Najiz — within 30 days in the case of non-payment of full wages, and within 90 days in the case of non-payment of partial wages.

Once a request is filed, the employer is notified through Najiz and has five days to object or settle the claim.

Five days. Compare that with the months a conventional labour complaint has historically taken.

Verification is not left to argument either. Non-payment is checked electronically through the Wage Protection System, which records wage payments against due dates and agreed amounts, using the employee’s bank account as identified in the active Qiwa contract. Enforcement can be initiated directly against the employer’s bank account where the worker has an active Qiwa contract and can demonstrate non-receipt of wages for the claimed period.

Nobody has to believe your word against the company’s. The system already holds the record.

The three things that must be true before any of this protects you

Here is what the compliance briefings do not say, because they are written for employers rather than for the man waiting on his salary.

1. You must have an active Qiwa contract that you actually agreed to. The enforcement mechanism runs off the contract registered on Qiwa. If your employment was never properly registered, or the contract on the system is not the one you were shown in Pakistan, the enforceable amount is whatever Qiwa says — not what you were promised.

2. Your bank account must be the one named in that contract. The Wage Protection System matches payments against the account recorded in the contract. Wages handed over in cash, or transferred into somebody else’s account, do not create the record the system checks for.

3. Your wages must be running through the Wage Protection System at all. The whole mechanism is built on that payment trail. Where there is no trail, there is nothing to enforce against.

If all three are true, you have a fast, direct legal route that did not exist for you two years ago. If any one of them is false, you are in the same position you were in before — and you should treat that as the problem to fix first.

What the new contract must now spell out

The format itself became stricter, and this works in the worker’s favour.

Employers must set out a detailed wage breakdown, including GOSI social security deductions and the resulting net wage, and the contract must state the exact date the salary is paid each month. A vague understanding that pay arrives “at month end” is no longer sufficient. If the registered pay date is the 25th and the transfer goes out on the 28th, that mismatch is now documented.

It also matters that the salary stated in the Qiwa contract is the actual amount paid through the Wage Protection System, and that any deductions comply with the Saudi Labour Law.

So when you open your contract on Qiwa, four fields deserve a photograph on your phone: the gross wage, the deductions, the net wage, and the pay date. Those four fields are what a court will enforce.

Who this does not help

An honest article has to include this section, and most will not.

The reform is built around documented, registered employment. It is therefore weakest exactly where Pakistani workers are most often exposed:

• “Free visa” arrangements, where a worker enters under one sponsor and works for somebody else entirely. The employer on Qiwa is not the person paying you, and the person paying you has no wage clause to enforce.
• Cash payment, which produces no Wage Protection System record.
• Undocumented overtime or verbal top-ups, which sit outside the contract wage and outside the enforcement mechanism.
• Disputes that are not about wages. The current scope is limited to wage-related claims, though the collaboration may eventually extend to other breaches of contracts registered on Qiwa.

None of that makes the reform small. It means the reform rewards workers whose paperwork is clean — which makes getting the paperwork right before departure more valuable than it has ever been.

What to do this month if you are already in Saudi Arabia

Open your contract on Qiwa and read it. Not the paper your agent gave you in Gujranwala. The version on the government system is the one that counts.

Check the bank account listed against the account your salary actually arrives in. If they differ, that is the single most urgent thing to correct.

Photograph the wage breakdown and the pay date. Keep it somewhere that is not only your phone.

Keep your bank statements. The evidence of non-receipt is drawn from your account record.

Know your two numbers: 30 and 90. Thirty days for wages not paid at all, ninety for wages paid only in part. Diarise the date your salary was due, not the date you started worrying.

If the account, employer name or wage on Qiwa does not match reality, treat it as the problem — not as a detail to sort out later. Every protection described in this article flows through those fields.

What to check before you leave Pakistan

For anyone still at the visa stage, the practical implication is straightforward. The Saudi system will now enforce a contract that exists correctly on Qiwa. So the questions to ask before you pay anyone are:

• Who is the employer that will appear on the Qiwa contract, and is it the company named in your offer?
• Will your wages be paid through the Wage Protection System into an account in your own name?
• Does the wage in the offer letter match the wage that will be registered?
• Is the recruiting agency licensed and its licence currently valid?

An agent who cannot answer the first three is selling you something the Saudi legal system will not recognise.

What this does not change

The reform strengthens wage enforcement. It does not change visa eligibility, sponsorship transfer rules, or the requirement to have a genuine job offer from a registered employer. It does not create jobs, and it does not remove the need for professional advice in a genuine dispute.

It also does not remove the ordinary labour law routes — it adds a faster one for a specific problem, unpaid wages, which happens to be the problem Pakistani workers report most.

Key Takeaways

• Phase III went live on 6 August 2026, covering all indefinite and open-ended contracts.
• The wage clause is directly enforceable through Najiz, bypassing the labour office and labour court.
• 30 days for wages not paid; 90 days for partial payment; the employer then has five days to object or settle.
• Verification is electronic, through the Wage Protection System and the bank account named in your Qiwa contract.
• Contracts must now state the wage breakdown, GOSI deductions, net wage and the exact monthly pay date.
• The protection depends on clean paperwork — an active Qiwa contract, your own named account, and wages routed through WPS.
• Cash wages and “free visa” arrangements fall outside it almost entirely.

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