Annual leave, front liner rewards postponed

KUWAIT: The recent law approved by the National Assembly and the Government on converting public sector employee annual leaves into cash, as well as unreleased rewards for COVID front liners will not be finished according to plans, and it will be postponed till next year, government sources revealed to Kuwait Times.

“The postponement of the annual budget until after the upcoming election of the National Assembly also delayed the government’s plans to release annual leave compensation and COVID front liners rewards due to the incompletion of revenue confirmation at the end of the fiscal year in April,” sources also added. This has made these sides wait until the new budget is approved to continue its release, the sources said, clarifying that annual leave compensations did not even exist in previous budget allocations.

Government departments have been preoccupied with receiving employee requests who want to keep their annual leaves and affirming their validity, as most departments have not even finished the process, which delayed the compensation to next year since the budget will not be allocated by the National Assembly until after November of this year.

This is mainly because if elections aren’t held until late September, this means that initial sessions which are meant to elect the speaker, secretaries, supervisors and parliamentary committees of the parliament will not be held before mid-October. Furthermore, this means that sessions meant to allocate the budget will not be before November, the sources said. “Despite that the lists with the names of COVID front liners have been completed, many groups will not receive their rewards until the coming year,” sources added.