Dear all, salaam! Through this post I thought of sharing a detailed write-up with all of you which you will find very useful in due course. I disengaged from Saudi Arabia recently on Final Exit.
When I started the process of relocation around couple of months back once I served my notice period, I could not come across a comprehensive and simple guide which could tell me all I needed to know for smoothly leaving KSA on Final Exit. What followed was a collaborative effort between our Administration, Government Relations, Human Resources and Finance teams in my office and the following document was prepared. The document stands true and updated as of September 2018. DISCLAIMER: This document is NOT a fool proof and error free checklist and possibilities of omissions do exist. This is a document prepared by different departments of a private sector company based on available knowledge and not intended to be a substitute to relevant official rules & regulations. PROCEDURE OF FINAL EXIT FROM SAUDI ARABIA FOR EXPATRIATE EMPLOYEES This is to explain what things an expat employee have to consider before and after process of Final Exit Visa of Saudi Arabia. 1. Dependent’s Fee: You need to pay the dependent’s fee for 2 months beyond the date you are applying for final exit visa before issuing final exit visa as the validity of final exit visa is 60 days. If you don’t pay the fee, you won’t be able to issue final exit. 2. Resignation with Notice Period: Upon end of your contract, you need to give notice to your employer for the number of days mentioned in your contract for the processing of your Final Exit visa. If your contract is silent about notice period, Labor Law suggests notice period of 30 days. 3. Evacuation of House: You have to give at least 30 days’ notice to the landlord before leaving the house. Normally house rent is paid in advance for 3 to 6 months in Saudi Arabia. If you have paid the advance for the months you will not be living in Saudi Arabia, you should search for a tenant yourself. Introduce him with the landlord and take the remainder of the rent from him. It is almost second to impossible to get back advance money from your current landlord. When you are searching for another tenant for the landlord, you should search for a buyer who can purchase all your belongings as well. Obviously, you cannot get the same price from which you purchased it. 4. Disconnect Landline and Other Post Paid SIM Cards: If you have any landline connection at your home under your name of STC, you must first deactivate the connection. You should deactivate it at least 15 days before processing the final exit visa. Procedure for deactivation of STC landline is very simple nowadays. You just need to call from your landline to STC and request to deactivate your service on a permanent basis. You will be asked to pay a certain due amount and confirm that if payment is made, service will be deactivated within 7 days. You should pay that amount on the same day. If you have any mobile postpaid connection under your name, try also to deactivate it by paying all your bills. If some amount is payable in your name, you may have to face problem at the airport. Keep sufficient balance in your prepaid SIM card before going to the Airport for the final exit. This will be your only source of communication in case of any problem. 5. Clear Electricity Bills: Don’t leave anything due in Saudi Arabia during final exit; as it will get you in trouble if you leave any dues at your own name. The authorities will put you as escaped “Huroob” which is really bad and cause complications even for later employment in the future. 6. Traffic Fines & Tickets: If you have any traffic fines or tickets under your name, try to clear them as soon as possible. You can check them online. It is recommended to keep checking it till the time you finally departure from Saudi Arabia. 7. Sell Your Car: It takes time to get a good offer for the sale of the car. There was a traditional way that you go to “Haraj” with the car; there would be several buyers there who will give you an offer after checking the car. This is surely the quickest way to sell your car but you may not get a good offer there. When you have decided to go on final exit from Saudi Arabia, it is better to place an advertisement along with the pictures of the car and your intended selling price on expatriates.com. Soon, you will be receiving offers from the buyers; you can show them your vehicle at your ease. If you don’t get a serious buyer and you reach to the last week of your departure, now it is the time to visit “Haraj” for a couple of days and get a good offer for the vehicle. Ownership transfer takes only one day so you don’t need to be worried about it. You will receive an SMS from your “Abshir” account or you can check it online from “Abshir” Website that the ownership has actually been transferred from your name to the name of the buyer. You should make it sure before your departure that the name has been transferred. 8. Surrender Your Credit Cards: Payable amount at your credit card can stop your departure from the airport. It is very important that you pay off all the bills on the credit card and deactivate them. If you don’t have any payable amount but a credit card is active, you can still face the problem. Credit card companies take some time to deactivate the card, so it is better to surrender the credit card well before the time of departure from Saudi Arabia. 9. Withdraw Money from Bank: Before processing of Final Exit Visa it is suggested to withdraw or send all of money in bank to home country. Your bank automatically deactivated on Iqama expiry. Sometime your iqama expired just before few days to final exit than you can reactivate bank account by showing final exit visa paper. You DO NOT need to close your bank account at the time of Final Exit and can withdraw the remaining amounts of any emergency balance (for SADAD payments of bills, traffic fines etc) through an ATM at the airport after clearing immigration counter at the time of Final Exit. 10. Get Police Clearance Certificate: One of the mistakes people do when they decide to leave Saudi Arabia permanently means at the time of going on final exit visa is “not getting police clearance certificate” from the Police Department. We would suggest you not to repeat this mistake. First of all, you need to apply for a letter of endorsement to your embassy. After that, you will have to attest documents from Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Once attested, you need to go along with the documents to the police station. It is better if you go to the police station along with government relations officer of your company. A police officer will tell you about the expected date of getting the police clearance certificate. It is better to go at least 3 days after the expected date mentioned by the police officer to collect the certificate. Each and every applicant (yourself, wife and kids) applying for PCC needs to visit Police Station. 11. Send the Important Belongings through Cargo: Before leaving the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on final exit, it is better to send all your important belongings through the Cargo service to your homeland. 12. End of Service Benefits: End of Service Benefits will be given to you after processing the final exit visa from Saudi Arabia. It is better to think before remitting your End of Service Benefits to your native country. You must have analyzed that the exchange rate used by the banks is lesser than the exchange rate you can get if exchanged in your native country. You can carry this money in cash and get better exchange rate. Make sure to declare the amount at the airport if it is more than SR 60,000. If your family is going before your departure, you can hand over some amount to them and ask them to keep it safe in Bank account in your native country. If your employer transfer End of Service Benefits after you have left the country, you can still transfer this amount to your home country account. You can also directly transfer to the bank account back home. Eosb calculation can be checked from the website http://www.laboreducation.gov.sa/…/End-of-Service-Award-Cal… 13. At the Time of Departure: Once the final exit visa is issued, you have to leave within the validity of the final exit visa. Keep in mind that validity of your Iqama is not applicable now. Please do not overstay otherwise you will be caught at the airport and will be detained for several months. 14. Stamped Final Visa: According to new facilities, many companies do not give final exit visa paper to the employees. As a result, this paper is not stamped by the immigration authorities. At the time when you try to apply for a new visa, some agents ask for the paper. Actually, these agents are not updated about the new procedures in Saudi Arabia. Just ask them to process your case to Saudi Embassy. Saudi Embassy can check online if you have exited from Saudi Arabia through Final Exit Visa. |