Annual Leave, Rest Days and the Flight Home: What Gulf Nurses Are Owed

Three questions come up in every Gulf nursing interview, usually in this order: how much, how many days off, and who pays for my flight home. The first has an answer on your offer letter. The second and third are usually answered by whoever is doing the recruiting, from memory, and the memory is often wrong.

They have published answers. Annual leave, public holidays and the weekly rest day are set by statute in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and all three governments put the articles online in English for nothing. The flight home is the interesting one, because there are two flights and only one of them is in the law.

The flight home: there are two tickets, not one

Nurses talk about “the ticket” as though it were one thing. It is two, and conflating them is how people end up paying for their own flight.

• The annual home-leave ticket — the flight to see your family once a year, sometimes every two years, sometimes with a family allowance attached. This appears in no article of the UAE, Saudi or Qatari law that applies to a nurse. It is a contract term, and a common one, but it exists only because it is written into your offer.
• The end-of-contract repatriation ticket — the flight that takes you home when the job ends. This one is statutory in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, by article number. And both articles carry a condition that most nurses fail.

The UAE: Article 13, and the clause that cancels it

Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 lists the employer's obligations at Article 13. Item 12 is the ticket:

“Bearing the repatriation expenses of the worker to his place of recruitment or any other place that both parties had agreed upon, unless he has already joined the service of another employer or unless the reason for terminating the contract was attributed to the worker, then that the latter shall be liable for incurring those expenses.”

Read the two exceptions slowly, because the first one describes the most common career move in Gulf nursing. A nurse who finishes two years at one Dubai hospital and moves straight to another has already joined the service of another employer. On the face of the article, the outgoing employer's obligation is gone. The second exception — termination attributable to the worker — is why the work-abandonment guide matters financially as well as legally.

Saudi Arabia: Article 40, in both directions

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development publishes Article 40 of the Labour Law in its employment-of-non-Saudis chapter. The first paragraph is a long list of costs that belong to the employer:

“The employer shall bear the costs of recruiting the foreign worker, the residence and work permit fees and their renewals, along with any penalties resulting from delays in such renewals, the fees for changing the profession, exit and re-entry fees, and the cost of the worker's return ticket to their home country after the termination of the relationship between the two parties.”

That is a wide obligation — iqama renewals, profession changes, exit and re-entry, the lot. Then paragraph 2 turns it around: “The worker shall bear the costs of his return to his home country if he is unfit for work or if he wishes to return without a legitimate reason.” Paragraph 3 adds that where you transfer your services, the incoming employer bears the transfer cost — which is worth knowing before you agree to pay a transfer fee yourself.

Qatar: the obligation is in the residence law, not the Labour Law

Al Meezan's Labour Law chapters on working hours and leave contain no repatriation ticket. Qatar puts that duty in the Entry, Exit and Residence Law No. 21 of 2015, which is a different instrument with a different regulator. We are not going to quote an article we could not read on a State of Qatar portal — but you should know the obligation exists and where to ask about it, which is the Ministry of Labour.

Annual leave: what the three statutes actually give

Two things to notice. First, the UAE's thirty days is a calendar-day entitlement in an article that also counts public holidays falling inside it (below), while Saudi Arabia's twenty-one and Qatar's three weeks are the smaller headline numbers. Comparing offers on the leave line alone is misleading.

Second, the step-up. Saudi Arabia moves you from twenty-one days to thirty at five consecutive years with the same employer, and Qatar from three weeks to four at five years. Nurses move employers often, and every move resets that clock.

Who chooses when you take it — and it is not you

This is the part that collides hardest with nursing. All three statutes give the employerthe right to schedule your leave around the needs of the service, which on a ward means around the roster and around everyone else's leave.

• UAE, Article 29(4). The employer may specify the dates according to work requirements and in agreement with the worker, or grant leave alternately among staff “in order to secure its work progress” — but must notify you of the specified date “within a sufficient time of not less than a month”.
• Saudi Arabia, Article 109. The employer may schedule leave according to the requirements of the work or grant it in rotation, and “must notify the worker of the scheduled leave date with sufficient notice of not less than thirty days”. Article 110 then lets the employer postpone your leave after the end of the year it fell due, for up to ninety days; any further postponement needs your written consent and cannot run past the end of the following year.
• Qatar, Article 80. The employer determines the date per work requirements and may split the leave with your consent, but “the division shall not be into more than two periods” — so a hospital cannot lawfully hand your three weeks back to you in five separate long weekends without agreement. On your written request, the employer may postpone not more than half of it to the next year.

The practical reading: book nothing non-refundable until the leave is approved in writing, and treat the one-month and thirty-day notice provisions as something you are entitled to ask for rather than a formality. For a nurse flying home to a family event, that notice period is the whole ballgame.

Can you take the money instead? Mostly, no

Selling leave back is common ward folklore and two of the three statutes prohibit it outright during service.

• Saudi Arabia. Article 109: “The worker must take their leave in the year it is due and may not waive it or receive a cash payment in lieu of taking it during their service.”
• Qatar. Article 81: “The Worker may not waive his right to the annual leave. Any agreement to the contrary shall be [null] and void.”
• UAE. Article 29(8) says the employer “may not prevent the worker from benefiting from his annual leave accrued for more than two years” unless you want to carry it forward or be paid a cash allowance for it. Carry-forward at all (Article 29(5)) needs the employer's approval and has to fit the establishment's regulations.

When the job ends, all three pay out. Saudi Article 111 gives wages for accrued leave days in proportion to the period not taken; Qatar Article 81 gives a cash alternative; UAE Article 29(9) pays for the accrued days “regardless of the leave duration”.

Working Eid: the clause every nurse eventually needs

Nursing rosters cover public holidays by definition, so the holiday articles are not theoretical for you the way they are for an office worker.

• UAE, Article 28. Public holidays are official days off with full pay, on dates a Cabinet resolution sets each year. If you are required to work one, the employer must give you another day off for each day worked, or pay that day at the normal rate plus not less than fifty per cent of the basic wage.
• Saudi Arabia, Article 107. Blunter, and better: “All working hours performed during holidays and official vacations shall be considered overtime hours.” The same article prices overtime at the hourly wage plus 50% of the basic wage, and allows paid compensatory leave instead only with the employee's consent.
• Qatar, Article 78. Names the holidays — three working days for Eid al-Fitr, three for Eid al-Adha, one for the national day and three more set by the employer — and says that if the work requires you in on any of them, the Article 75 rest-day rule applies instead, which is a replacement day off and the basic wage plus an increment of at least 150 per cent.

Rest days, and why shift work changes the answer

Every one of the three laws guarantees a weekly rest. Two of them then write shift workers out of the best part of it — and nurses are shift workers.

Qatar's Article 75 is the clearest example of a pattern this site has now hit three times. The article gives every worker twenty-four consecutive hours of paid rest — that part covers you. It then says Friday is the usual rest day “except the shift Workers”, and bars two consecutive Fridays “with exception of the shift Workers”. A ward nurse gets the rest; she does not get to expect it on a Friday, and the two-Friday protection is not hers. The same drafting habit is what makes the night-shift premium in both the UAE and Qatar a contract term rather than a statutory one.

Saudi Arabia's Article 104 has the opposite quirk and it works in your favour: “The weekly day of rest may not be compensated with a monetary payment.” An employer cannot simply buy your rest day off you. Article 105 does allow rest days to be accumulated for up to eight weeks — but only in remote areas and continuous-operation work, only by agreement with the workers, and only with the Ministry's approval.

Two Saudi entitlements nurses routinely miss

• Hajj leave — Article 114. Not less than ten and not more than fifteen days including the Eid al-Adha holiday, with pay, once during your entire period of service, if you have not performed Hajj before and have completed at least two consecutive years with the employer. The employer may cap how many staff take it in a given year, which on a ward means asking early.
• Life-event leave — Article 113. Five fully paid days on marriage or on the death of a spouse, ascendant or descendant; three days on the death of a sibling; three days on the birth of a child, taken within seven days of the birth. The employer may ask for supporting documents.

What to ask before you sign

• The basic wage, as a number. It prices unused leave, overtime, holiday work and gratuity. Everything else on the offer is decoration by comparison.
• Leave days, and whether they are calendar or working days. Thirty calendar days and thirty working days are six weeks apart.
• The home-leave ticket, spelled out. Frequency, destination airport, dependants, cash-in-lieu, and what happens if you resign. It is a contract term or it is nothing.
• Who pays the repatriation flight if you move hospitals. Ask this one explicitly, because UAE Article 13(12) and Saudi Article 40(2) both have an answer you may not like.
• How public holidays worked are compensated — day off or premium, and at which rate. Then check it against Article 28, Article 107 or Article 78 for your country.
• How leave is rostered — blackout periods, how much notice you get, and whether leave can be split. Ask for the written policy, not the reassurance.

The bottom line

The floor is statutory and published: thirty days in the UAE, twenty-one rising to thirty in Saudi Arabia, three weeks rising to four in Qatar, with a paid weekly rest of at least a day in all three and a premium or a replacement day for holidays you work. The employer picks the dates; you are owed notice. You generally cannot cash leave in while you are employed, and when you leave, the payout is priced on basic wage.

And the flight home is two flights. The one at the end of the contract is in the law, with a condition attached that catches the nurse who moves to a better hospital. The one that takes you home every year is in your contract or it does not exist. Knowing which is which is worth more at the negotiating table than any of the numbers above.

Official sources

• UAE Government — Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021, full text (PDF) — Article 13 employer obligations including repatriation, Article 19 overtime and weekend work, Article 21 the weekend, Article 28 public holidays, Article 29 annual leave.
• u.ae — Annual leave in the private sector— the government portal's plain-language version of Article 29, including carry-over and payment for unused days.
• Saudi MHRSD — Work Conditions and Circumstances— the Labour Law's working-conditions chapter in English, carrying Articles 104 and 105 (weekly rest), 107 (overtime and holiday hours), 109 to 111 (annual leave), 113 (life-event leave) and 114 (Hajj leave).
• Saudi MHRSD — Employment of Non-Saudis — carries Article 40 in full, including the return-ticket obligation and the cases in which the worker bears that cost.
• Al Meezan — Qatar Labour Law No. 14 of 2004, working hours and leave — the State of Qatar's legal portal, carrying Articles 73 to 82.
• Qatar Ministry of Labour — where to confirm the repatriation obligation under the Entry, Exit and Residence Law No. 21 of 2015, which is not part of the Labour Law.

Labour laws are amended, and quietly: Saudi Arabia's Labour Law was amended in February 2025 and material quoting the previous text is still easy to find. Every clause on this page is quoted from the sources above as read on the review date shown at the top. Confirm each one on the official page, and take proper advice before acting on it.