Kuwaiti banks stated the Public Authority for Housing Welfare in a collective letter stated that they do not provide a housing allowance to their Kuwaiti employees saying, however, what some of them get from a similar financial benefit is an allowance called the job grade allowance, which is granted to bank employees usually between 150 and 750 dinars, according to the job grade.
The issue goes back to the fact that the PAHW reportedly had learned that banks give their employees housing allowance under the name of a job allowance, and the suspicion increased more about the possibility of similarity between the government and banks, that some of the allowances granted by banks was in the name of a job degree equal to the housing allowance.
Moreover, the PAHW confirmed that it is not allowed for a Kuwaiti employee in the private sector to combine between the housing allowance he receives from the authority and the job allowance is for housing public money should be protected.
Of course, this decision is not only related to bank employees. In theory, the ineligibility to combine the housing allowance paid by the PAHW and the one spent from any entity in the private sector for the same purpose applies to all citizens working in the private sector, considering that this is a violation of the allowance law.
The sources indicated that the PAHW inquiry from the banks in this regard came after employees in the banks submitted to the institution detailed salary certificates stating that they had obtained a housing allowance, and others indicating that they had obtained a functional degree allowance equal to the housing allowance in the first certificate, without adding a statement of the housing allowance.
This discrepancy prompted the institution to resolve the speculations that opened in this regard, by addressing the banks to clarify what is meant by the job grade provision specifically, while stressing the need for banks to respond to this inquiry in a manner of urgency and importance.
The sources indicated that it is believed that a branch of a foreign bank operating in Kuwait includes within the statement of its employees a name called a housing allowance, which led to this confusion between the government housing allowance and the name of the job allowance in banks, stressing that all Kuwaiti banks do not include within the statement of their salaries for their employees a housing allowance, but rather a financial incentive different from the housing allowance.
The sources indicated that the PAHW has asked the banks to notify them whether the job-grade allowance is one of the benefits paid to its employees under the name of housing allowance, explaining that this allowance is granted in all Kuwaiti banks as a job allowance and not a housing allowance and that it is not fixed as its rate changes from one bank to another and from one job level to another.
The sources indicated that banks had stopped granting their national employees housing allowance for decades, but due to the increase in life obligations, they introduced a job title allocation for them.
With regard to its clarification of the name of the job grade allocation for bank employees, the PAHW stressed the need to inform it of all changes that occur in the status of those who are eligible for rent allowance, socially and functionally, as well as in terms of real estate ownership or when any of the conditions for entitlement to the allowance disappear, during period not exceeding one month.
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