Saudi employees limited to five contracts a year for Nitaqat counting

Saudi Arabia’s Qiwa platform has clarified the rules governing how Saudi employees are counted under the Nitaqat Saudisation programme, including limits on employment contracts over a 52-week period.

Under the mechanism, a Saudi employee must have no more than five employment contracts during the preceding 52 weeks to continue being counted as one Saudi employee in Nitaqat, according to the Qiwa platform under the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development.

For an employee to qualify for Nitaqat counting, the employment contract must be valid and registered on Qiwa. The employee must also have a total registered salary of at least SAR4,000 and cannot be registered as a part-time employee or a student.

Qiwa has separately clarified restrictions on issuing new contracts. A Saudi employee cannot enter into a new employment contract if they have already entered into more than seven contracts during a 365-day period starting from the date of their first contract.

If the seven-contract threshold is exceeded, an eighth contract cannot be issued until one full year has passed from the date of the first contract in that period. The restriction previously triggered a system message informing employers that no new employment contract could be issued for the Saudi employee.

The platform has also set a limit on the number of contracts a Saudi employee can hold simultaneously. An employee can be bound by a maximum of two employment contracts at the same time. To take up another job, an employee holding two active contracts must terminate one of them before entering into a new contract.

The rules form part of Saudi Arabia’s ongoing efforts to regulate employment records and the counting of Saudi nationals under Nitaqat, the country’s Saudisation programme.