10,000 companies frozen over unpaid wages: pay is now due by the 7th

Workers still waiting can file a report through PAM's Ballighni service, and the freeze hits every licence the owner holds

22 October 2026 Now 2 min read

Around 10,000 private-sector companies, each with five or more workers on file, have had their files frozen for failing to pay wages. That was the figure given by Sheikh Fahad Al-Yousef, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, at a meeting with company owners at the Public Authority for Manpower (PAM) on 21 October 2026. Some of those workers had gone four months unpaid; others a year and a half.

What employers now face

Salaries must be paid before the 7th of the following month.
An automated system freezes a company’s file as soon as payments stop.
The freeze is not limited to the offending file: it covers the owner and every licence they hold.
The system makes no distinction between files, or between Kuwaiti and non-Kuwaiti staff.

If your salary is late

PAM takes complaints online through its Ballighni (“Report to me”) service, where you can also follow the reply. According to PAM figures published on 21 October, the service has received 389 reports and answered 201 of them; 40 were about late salaries.

Still only under study

Several ideas were floated at the meeting, but none has been decided, so nothing changes today:

A cap of 30 to 40 percent on any single nationality within one company, with fees above that line.
Reopening transfers of domestic workers from Article 20 visas to private-sector Article 18.
Letting workers registered on government contracts move into the wider labour market.
Changing how end-of-service pay is handed out, for example yearly.

Al-Yousef also told PAM’s leadership to set aside one day a week to receive citizens, from 8am to 1pm. The day has not yet been announced.

Photo: Kuwait One card with the State of Kuwait emblem and PAM’s name over a blurred construction site in Shuaiba. Background photo by Fluor, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: Sheikh Fahad Al-Yousef at PAM’s “wage compliance” meeting, and PAM figures on the Ballighni service, as reported by Al-Jarida and Al-Anba, 22 October 2026.