Emiratis who are insured through the General Pension and Social Security Authority (GPSSA) are required to complete a minimum of one year in their jobs before becoming eligible for end-of-service payment. The minimum duration for an insured individual to spend at an entity is 11 months and one day, as the extra ‘one day’ is considered a month under the UAE Pension Law.
According to GPSSA’s 2022 statistics, 24% of end-of-service cases did not meet the proper entitlement conditions, with 1,461 out of 6,138 Emiratis not being eligible to receive their end-of-service benefits due to terminating their employment contracts within less than a year.
The UAE Pension Authority emphasized that the longer the duration of employment, the more benefits an insured individual will receive, including an increase in the value of their end-of-service reward. The salary used to calculate the bonus is the salary in the pension account, with insured individuals receiving 1.5 times their salary for the first five years of service, two months’ salary for the next five years, and three months’ salary for the next five years.
Insured individuals are entitled to all their insurance rights during this period, including a maximum pension of 100% in case of work-related disability or death, which is what an insured individual who has worked and contributed for 35 years will receive. Furthermore, insured Emiratis can choose to add employment periods when changing entities.
The GPSSA urges all new, current, and previous members to verify their registration and contribution payments from the moment they are hired in an entity. There have been numerous reports of employees resigning and being unable to join a new entity without first paying their registration and contributions, leading to retroactive payments from both the employee and the previous employer and putting the insured at risk of losing the opportunity to be hired by another entity.