All workers in Qatar need to have a valid residence permit or RP to be able to work legally. But what if your current resident permit has been banned or canceled?
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In case the residence permit is canceled, the worker has a month or 30 days to stay in Qatar. After that period, the employee has to go back to the home country to prevent any legal troubles.
What is a Residence Permit?
Those who want to work in Qatar will need a Work Residence Permit or residence permit. The employer typically processes this permit for the employee. The employer has to renew the residence permit every year. In addition, the employer is given until 90 days to renew the permit without having to pay a fine.
The Hukoomi website provides information about the employer’s role in residence permit renewal.
The individual can also renew their permits online. But this feature is only applicable for those with Qatari Smart ID cards. The MOI website has a portal for renewing the permit.
There is a corresponding fee for the renewal of the residence permit. For instance, employees with support from their employers are other companies will pay QAR 1,000 to renew. Meanwhile, those who have family sponsorships will pay QAR 500. They will also have to pay extra to request delivery of the permit.
On the other hand, the worker’s residence permit can be canceled due to a variety of legal reasons. In cases like this, the worker has to leave the country within a month.
The worker cannot remain in Qatar without a valid residence permit or there will be corresponding legal consequences. Most importantly, the concerned worker will find it difficult to get another job.
Employers have the prerogative to cancel their employee’s residence permits at any time. They can cancel the residence permit online.
In the past, workers whose residence permits have been canceled needed to wait for two years before they can return to Qatar. With the changes in the labor law, the workers do not need to wait this long to return.
They can even return the following day to Qatar as long as they get a new offer from another employer. If they get a new job offer, this means that they will get a new residence permit. A new job offer will also allow the worker to return to Qatar despite receiving a ban from the previous employer.
This scenario is possible because the kafala system is no longer in place. Thus, the employee is free to pursue another job without requiring clearance from their previous employer.
But is important to avoid being blacklisted because this is a serious case. Those who were blacklisted may only return after four years. Aside from that, they also cannot work in other Gulf countries. Each of these countries enacted a travel ban to prevent entries of workers facing such cases. This is also possible because the countries can share fingerprints and other information about the employee to ensure that their countries will be safe from such individuals.
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