Your Employer Is Holding Your Passport: What Gulf Law Actually Says
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You arrived, you handed over your passport for the residence visa, and it never came back. Or it came back and then was taken again “for safekeeping”, or “because the hospital keeps all staff passports”, or because you signed something at induction you were not given time to read. Every nurse this happens to reaches the same conclusion within about a week: I cannot leave.
That conclusion is wrong, and it is wrong in two separate ways that are worth separating. Holding your passport is prohibited in all six of the countries this site covers. And noneof those six requires a private-sector nurse to have her employer’s permission to leave the country. You are not legally trapped. You are administratively obstructed, and obstruction has a published remedy in every one of these jurisdictions.
Employment law only — not legal advice
The one-line answer, per country
The ban is close to universal. What differs — and what actually matters when you are deciding what to do on a Tuesday afternoon — is which kind of law it lives in, because that decides who enforces it and which door you knock on.
| Country | The rule | Where the rule lives | Exit permit needed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| UAE | Employer must not withhold the worker's official documents | Labour Law art. 13(2); MOI Circular 267/2002 | No |
| Saudi Arabia | Prohibited; fine per worker | Council of Ministers Decision 166/1421 (2000) — not the Labour Law | No — you apply yourself via Absher |
| Qatar | Only with your written consent, and returned on request | Law 21/2015 arts. 8 and 33 — the immigration law | No, except a narrow senior-role list |
| Bahrain | Keep it yourself unless you consent; refusing to return it is a crime | Penal Code art. 395 (breach of trust) + LMRA guidance — criminal, not labour | No |
| Oman | Prohibited except with your written permission | Labour Law (Royal Decree 53/2023) art. 6 | No |
| Kuwait | Prohibited | Ministerial Decision 166/2007, whose entire subject is this | No |
Three of the six — Qatar, Oman and, on its own regulator’s wording, Bahrain — contemplate the employer keeping the document with your consent. In the other three, consent is irrelevant: a signature does not make a prohibited act lawful. So “but I signed something” is a real question in Doha, Muscat and Manama, and a non-question in Dubai, Riyadh and Kuwait City. In all three of the consent countries it has a limit, because consent you gave is consent you can withdraw — see below.
UAE: the article is broader than the passport
Three other pages on this site quote u.ae’s summary line, which is accurate and worth knowing: “The confiscation of workers’ passports is prohibited and workers do not require their employer’s permission to leave the country.” But the underlying article says something more useful. Article 13 of Federal Decree-Law No. (33) of 2021 lists the employer’s obligations, and clause 2 is:
“Not withholding the official documents of the worker or forcing him to leave the State at the end of the employment relationship.”
Official documents, not passport. For a nurse that difference is the whole point, because the document most often held back is not the passport at all. It is the degree certificate original, the transcript, the registration certificate from home, or the experience certificate — the exact set that DataFlow needs, and the exact set a nurse discovers is missing at the worst possible moment, when she is applying somewhere better. Article 13(2) covers those.
A contract clause cannot authorise it
u.ae publishes a toll-free Labour Claims and Advisory Call Centre on 80084, and a set of online complaint services for private-sector employees, free-zone employees and salary complaints separately. Advice is not a complaint — you may call and ask what your options are without filing anything, and that is usually the right first move.
Saudi Arabia: it is not in the Labour Law, and the blogs have it wrong
Search this question and you will be told, repeatedly and confidently, that the Saudi rule is “Article 20 of the Labour Law”. It is not. Article 20 of the Labor Law (Royal Decree M/51) was read at source for this page and it is the general abuse-of-rights clause:
“An employer or a worker may not perform any act that may abuse the provisions of this Law or the decisions or regulations issued for its implementation. Neither of them may undertake any act that infringes upon the freedom of the other…”
A real clause, and arguably relevant in spirit, but it says nothing about passports and it is not what anyone means when they cite it. The actual instrument sits outside the Labour Law: the ILO’s December 2023 brief attributes the prohibition and its fine to Council of Ministers Decision No. 166/1421 (2000), Regulating Relations between Migrant Workers and Their Employers, with the penalty later increased by a 2019 ministerial order amending the Labour Law Implementing Regulations. The same brief records a fine of SAR 5,000 as at December 2023. Treat that as a figure with a date on it, not a current one — Saudi penalty schedules have been revised in both directions since.
This matters practically: if you complain to MHRSD citing “Article 20”, you are citing the wrong document. Describe the conduct instead and let the ministry name the instrument. It is the same failure mode as the IELTS 4.5 figure quoted at Saudi nurses — a genuine clause, applied at the wrong place.
Qatar: consent is allowed, but it is revocable
Qatar is the country where the paperwork you signed genuinely changes the answer, and also the country where it changes it least permanently. The rule is in the immigration statute, not the labour one: Law No. 21 of 2015 Regulating the Entry, Exit and Residence of Expatriates. Per the ILO brief, Article 8 lets an employer keep the passport onlywith the worker’s written consent — and requires it to be returned on request. Article 33 attaches the penalty, recorded by the ILO at up to QAR 25,000 as at December 2023.
So the consent is not a waiver of the right; it is a permission you can withdraw. “I am requesting the return of my passport”, in writing, ends the lawful basis for holding it. Qatar also requires employers to provide lockable personal storage that the worker can reach at any time, which tells you what the law thinks the alternative to employer custody is supposed to be.
And no, they cannot stop you leaving
Exit permits are gone for the overwhelming majority of workers. The remaining exception is capped at 5 per cent of an establishment’s workforce and, per the ILO brief, is limited to chief executive and financial officers, the director supervising daily operations, and the ICT director. A staff nurse is not on that list. If you are prevented from leaving for any reason, there is an Expatriates’ Exit Appeals Committee that issues a decision within three working days.
Bahrain: this one is a police matter, and it turns on the refusal
Bahrain is the outlier and the reason this page is a table rather than a paragraph. The prohibition is cited — by the ILO brief and by the US State Department’s trafficking report alike — to Article 395 of the Bahrain Penal Code, not the Labour Law. That changes the door. A labour complaint to the Ministry of Labour is the route for a contractual dispute; conduct defined by the Penal Code is a matter for the police.
Article 395 was read at source for this revision, and it is not a passport clause. It sits in Chapter 3 of the Penal Code, Breach of Trust and Related Offences, and reads:
“A prison sentence shall be inflicted upon any person who embezzles, uses or squanders monies, instruments or other movable properties in a manner that is detrimental to the owners thereof should such funds or properties have been delivered thereto in trust, on lease, mortgage or free for use or subject to an agency arrangement.”
So Bahrain has no bespoke rule about passports. It has a general offence that your passport falls into — and the shape of that offence is the practical point. The property has to have been delivered in trust, and the wrong is using it detrimentally to its owner. Handing your passport to HR for the visa is the delivery in trust. What is capable of crossing the line is the refusal to give it back. That is why the State Department report records the direct court route as available “if the employer refuses to return the passport”.
In Bahrain, the written request is the whole case
The consent line the regulator itself draws
The Labour Market Regulatory Authority publishes a Foreign Employees’ Guide in English, and its instruction to workers is not a flat ban:
“Keep your passport in your possession. Do not give it to anyone, unless you fully agree and consent to keep it with your employer.”
Read that carefully, because it puts Bahrain with Qatar and Oman rather than with the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Consent is contemplated. It is also the only reading consistent with Article 395: a breach-of-trust offence presupposes lawful custody and criminalises what happens next. What consent is not is permanent — it is yours, so you can withdraw it, and withdrawing it in writing is the step that turns “the hospital keeps all staff passports” into a refusal with a date on it.
Where to take it
The LMRA runs an Expat Protection Centre, set up in 2015 as a single point for expatriate workers. It publishes protection and assistance, legal counselling, and — the two that matter here — labour suit coordination and civil suit coordination, meaning it will help you bring the case rather than only record it. It is also the designated first responder for screening trafficking indicators, and passport retention is one of the listed indicators. Its 24/7 contact centre is 995 inside Bahrain.
Per the State Department’s report, a worker may file a grievance for passport withholding with the police or with the LMRA, and may go to court directly if the employer refuses to return it. We take no view on what conduct crosses which line — that is a question for a Bahraini lawyer, and Bahrain remains the country on this list where it is most worth getting advice rather than filing a form.
Oman and Kuwait
Oman.The Labour Law promulgated by Royal Decree 53 of 2023 — the new one, which replaced the 2003 law — prohibits an employer from keeping the worker’s passport or identity documents except with the worker’s written permission, at Article 6. Like Qatar, a consent regime. No exit permit is required to leave.
Kuwait. The instrument is Ministerial Decision No. 166 of 2007 Concerning the Prohibition of Confiscating Travel Documents of Workers in the Private Sector, reinforced by Ministerial Decision No. 2194 of 2016. Note the title: Kuwait issued a decision whose entire subject is this problem, which is not what a government does about a rare one. Disputes are lodged at a local Public Authority for Manpower office; a PAM investigator mediates, and if there is no settlement within a month the case is referred to the Civil Court’s Labour Circuit. No exit permit is required.
What the passport does not control: your licence
This is the part no general-purpose article will tell you, and it is the reason to read this on a nursing site rather than an expat forum.
Your professional file does not live in your passport. Your DataFlow report, your Good Standing Certificate, your Sheryan record, your Mumaris+ or QCHP file, your exam result — all of it sits with the authority, under your own account, keyed to your name and passport number. An employer holding the physical booklet does not hold any of that, cannot revoke it, and cannot see it. If you have already passed the exam, you have already passed it.
What the booklet does block is real but narrow, and mostly immigration-shaped: leaving the country, a new residence visa, and any step where an authority or test centre needs to see the original rather than a copy. Most licensing steps run on scanned copies — the document checklist is a list of uploads. So keep a clear scan of every page of your passport, and of your Emirates ID or QID or iqama, from the day you arrive. It costs nothing and it removes most of the leverage.
Scan everything on day one
What to actually do
In rough order, and stopping wherever the problem resolves. Nothing here is urgent enough to skip a step — and skipping to the last one is the mistake that turns a document problem into a much worse one.
- Ask in writing, once, plainly. An e-mail to HR requesting the return of your passport and any other original documents, kept in your own inbox. In Qatar, Oman and Bahrain this also withdraws any consent you gave. Everywhere it creates the date the request was made, which is the fact everything later turns on.
- Ask what the actual reason is.Some retentions are a genuine in-progress visa or medical step and the document comes back in a fortnight. Ask which process, and when it completes. A specific answer is a good sign; “company policy” is not one.
- Call the advisory line before you file anything.The UAE’s is 80084. Advice is free and filing is a separate decision; you are allowed to understand your position first.
- Check the rest of the relationship. Document retention very rarely arrives alone. If your salary is also late, the UAE starts a clock on it — see the unpaid-salary guide. If you are being rostered outside your scope, that is its own problem and its own article.
- File, through the published route.MOHRE in the UAE, MHRSD in Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Labour’s unified complaints platform in Qatar, the LMRA’s Expat Protection Centre or the police in Bahrain, PAM in Kuwait. Describe the conduct and the dates; do not cite an article number you have not read.
- Do not simply stop turning up. This is the one that costs nurses years. An absconding report is far easier for an employer to file than it is for you to reverse, and in the UAE a worker who has already filed a labour complaint is in a materially different position from one who has not. Complain first, leave second. The order is the protection.
And if what you are really deciding is whether to resign, that is a different page with different clocks — the UAE notice and gratuity guide and the Saudi final exit guide.
Sources
- Federal Decree-Law No. (33) of 2021on assets.u.ae — Article 13(2) (official documents) and Article 65(1) (minimum rights). Marked “This is NOT an official translation”.
- u.ae — Labour rights — the passport and permission-to-leave statement, and the 80084 Labour Claims and Advisory Call Centre.
- Labor Law, Royal Decree M/51 on hrsd.gov.sa — Article 20, quoted to show what it does not say.
- Absher — the Saudi portal a worker uses to apply for her own exit and re-entry or final exit visa.
- Bahrain Penal Code, Decree-Law 15 of 1976— English text hosted by MENA Rights Group; Article 395 quoted in full, and Article 54 for the default prison range. Bahrain’s own legalaffairs.gov.bh does not respond from where we fetch. The scan carries two obvious OCR slips in this article — “shall he inflicted” and “have beer delivered” — which we have silently read as be and been and changed nothing else.
- LMRA — Foreign Employees' Guide (v5.0, English)— the passport-and-consent instruction, and 995 as the Expat Protection Centre’s 24/7 contact centre. The EPC's own page for its remit and its labour- and civil-suit coordination services.
- ILO FAIRWAY, Regulatory framework governing migrant workers, country briefs updated December 2023 — UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait. Secondary sources; every instrument, article number, penalty figure and exit-permit position above that is not separately sourced comes from these.
Rules and penalties change. Confirm anything you are relying on with the ministry named for your country before you act on it.
Frequently asked questions
Is it legal for my employer to keep my passport in the Gulf?
No, in all six countries this site covers, though the rule lives in a different law in each. The UAE's Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021 obliges the employer at Article 13(2) to refrain from "withholding the official documents of the worker". Saudi Arabia's prohibition is in Council of Ministers Decision No. 166/1421 (2000), not the Labour Law. Qatar's is Article 8 of Law No. 21 of 2015. Bahrain's is Article 395 of the Penal Code — not a passport clause at all, but the general breach-of-trust offence, which is why it bites on the refusal to return rather than on the taking. Oman's is Article 6 of the Labour Law promulgated by Royal Decree 53 of 2023. Kuwait's is Ministerial Decision No. 166 of 2007, whose entire subject is the prohibition. Qatar, Oman and Bahrain contemplate custody with the worker's consent — the LMRA's own Foreign Employees' Guide tells workers to keep the passport "unless you fully agree and consent to keep it with your employer" — while the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait do not, so a signature there does not make it lawful.
Is the Saudi passport rule really Article 20 of the Labour Law?
No, and this is one of the most repeated errors on the subject. Article 20 of the Labor Law (Royal Decree M/51) is the general abuse-of-rights clause — "An employer or a worker may not perform any act that may abuse the provisions of this Law... Neither of them may undertake any act that infringes upon the freedom of the other" — and it says nothing about passports. The prohibition sits outside the Labour Law entirely, in Council of Ministers Decision No. 166/1421 (2000), with the penalty later increased by a 2019 ministerial order amending the Implementing Regulations. If you complain to MHRSD, describe the conduct rather than citing an article number.
Can my employer stop me leaving the country if they have my passport?
Not lawfully, in any of the six. The ILO's December 2023 country briefs record that no exit permit is required for private-sector workers in the UAE, Bahrain, Oman or Kuwait. Qatar removed them for all but a narrow list — chief executive and financial officers, the director supervising daily operations and the ICT director, capped at 5 per cent of an establishment's workforce — and runs an Expatriates' Exit Appeals Committee that decides within three working days. Saudi Arabia, the last holdout, moved the exit and re-entry and final exit visa into the worker's own Absher account under the Labour Reform Initiative. Holding the booklet obstructs you administratively; it does not trap you legally.
I signed a form at induction agreeing they could hold my documents — does that count?
It depends which country. In Qatar and Oman written consent is what makes custody lawful, but it is revocable: Qatar's Article 8 requires the passport to be returned on the worker's request, so a written request ends the basis for holding it. Bahrain works the same way — the LMRA's Foreign Employees' Guide contemplates consent, and Article 395 of the Penal Code is a breach-of-trust offence, which presupposes lawful custody and bites on what happens when you ask for the document back. In the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait consent is not a defence, because a signature cannot authorise a prohibited act. The UAE also has Article 65(1), under which the Decree-Law's rights "represent the minimum rights for workers" and a contract term is only effective where it gives the worker rights "that are more useful" than the article.
They are holding my degree certificate and experience letters, not my passport — is that covered?
In the UAE, yes, and this is why the article is worth reading rather than the summary. Article 13(2) says "official documents", not "passport", so it reaches the degree original, the transcript, your home registration certificate and the experience letters — which is the exact set DataFlow primary source verification depends on. Oman's Article 6 likewise covers "the worker's passport or identity documents". Scan every one of these on the day you arrive and store the copies somewhere that is not your work laptop or hospital e-mail.
My hospital in Bahrain is holding my passport — where do I report it?
Bahrain is the one country here where this is criminal rather than contractual, so the door is different. Article 395 of the Penal Code is the general breach-of-trust offence — property "delivered thereto in trust" and then used to its owner's detriment — which means the act that matters is the refusal to return the passport, not the original handover. Ask for it back in writing and keep whatever comes back; that dated request is the record. The LMRA's Expat Protection Centre, set up in 2015, publishes protection and assistance, legal counselling and both labour- and civil-suit coordination, and its 24/7 contact centre is 995 inside Bahrain. Per the US State Department's trafficking report a worker may also file a grievance with the police or the LMRA, or go to court directly if the employer refuses to return it. Get Bahraini legal advice before deciding which of those to use.
Can they cancel my DHA licence or my DataFlow report because they hold my passport?
No. Your professional file does not live in the passport. Your DataFlow report, Good Standing Certificate, Sheryan, Mumaris+ or QCHP record and your exam result all sit with the authority under your own account, keyed to your name and passport number rather than the physical booklet. An employer holding it cannot see, revoke or alter any of that, and if you have already passed the exam you have already passed it. Most licensing steps also run on uploaded scans rather than originals.
Should I just stop going to work until they return my passport?
No — that is the step that turns a document problem into a years-long one. An absconding or unexpected work abandonment report is far easier for an employer to file than it is for you to reverse, and in the UAE a worker who has already filed a labour complaint is in a materially different position from one who has not. Ask in writing first, call the advisory line (the UAE publishes a toll-free Labour Claims and Advisory Call Centre on 80084), then file through the published route — MOHRE, MHRSD, Qatar's unified complaints platform, Bahrain's Ministry of Labour, or a PAM office in Kuwait. Complain first, leave second; the order is the protection.
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