WPS for transport companies in the UAE: the June 2026 rules and what a driver costs per km

Every transport company registered with MOHRE must pay drivers through the Wage Protection System, and since 1 June 2026 wages are due on the first day of each month under Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026. An establishment counts as compliant only if 85% of due wages transfer on time, and transport and storage is a named priority sector for enforcement.

Key takeaways

• From 1 June 2026, the first day of each Gregorian month is the unified due date for the previous month’s wages, under Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026, which repealed Resolution No. 598 of 2022 (MOHRE, 2026).
• An establishment is considered compliant if it transfers at least 85% of the total wages due within the specified timeframe (MOHRE statement, June 2026).
• The reported escalation runs on a calendar: electronic alerts from day 2, new work permits stopped from day 5, fines from day 11, labour disputes filed and permits suspended from day 16, with priority on establishments of 25 or more workers in construction, transport and storage, security, cleaning and recruitment (Resolution 340/2026, as reported June 2026).
• WPS covers more than 99% of private-sector workers and moved over AED 35 billion per month in late 2025, rising past AED 37 billion by mid-2026 (MOHRE, December 2025 and June 2026).
• The employer bears every cost of paying through WPS, bank fees and agent charges included, and may not pass any of it to workers, directly or by deduction (MOHRE WPS guideline under Ministerial Decree No. 788 of 2009).
• Gratuity accrues at 21 days of basic wage per year for the first five years of service (u.ae, Article 51 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021), roughly 5.83% of basic per month, a cost most fleets never book against the truck.

What is the Wage Protection System, and who must pay through it?

The Wage Protection System is an electronic salary transfer system developed with the Central Bank of the UAE. It requires private-sector establishments registered with the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE) to pay workers’ wages through approved banks, exchange houses and financial institutions, so that the Ministry holds a live database proving wages were paid in full and on time (MOHRE, WPS guidance, checked August 2026).

Coverage is effectively total. MOHRE reported in December 2025 that WPS covers more than 99% of private-sector workers, with establishments transferring over AED 35 billion in wages through it every month (MOHRE news, 10 December 2025); by June 2026 the Ministry put monthly volume above AED 37 billion. The system is not new: it dates to Ministerial Decree No. 788 of 2009, which phased registration in by company size from September 2009. That original guideline also fixed a rule fleets still miss: the employer bears all WPS costs, bank fees, agent charges, everything, and may not share them with workers by any means, including deduction from wages.

For a transport or construction-fleet company the practical meaning is simple: if your drivers, operators and mechanics are on your MOHRE trade licence, their wages go through WPS, on the clock described next.

What changed for WPS on 1 June 2026?

The due date moved and the clock got faster. Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026 (official PDF on mohre.gov.ae) took effect on 1 June 2026, repealing Resolution No. 598 of 2022. It makes the first day of each Gregorian month the unified due date for the previous month’s wages, and any payment after that date is a delay (MOHRE, as reported at implementation, June 2026).

Under the old regime, u.ae’s guidance stated an employer was in default only if wages went unpaid within the first 15 days after the due date (u.ae payment-of-wages page, checked March 2026). The new resolution replaces that slack with a monitoring calendar that starts on day 2. Two features soften it. First, the compliance test is proportional: an establishment is considered compliant if it transfers at least 85% of total wages due within the specified timeframe, which MOHRE describes as a balance between operational reality and workers’ rights (MOHRE statement via WAM, 4 June 2026). Second, the Ministry describes the approach as gradual, electronic notifications first, giving establishments time to rectify before administrative measures land (MOHRE news, 4 June 2026).

Do not read 85% as permission to short-pay 15% of the crew. The unpaid workers’ entitlements remain owed in full, individually enforceable, and the margin exists for edge cases, a disputed leaver, a frozen account, not as routine headroom.

What happens when a transport company pays wages late?

The escalation reported when Resolution 340/2026 took effect runs day by day from the due date, and transport is named in it. As reported at implementation (state media carrying the Ministry’s summary, 1 June 2026): electronic alerts and notifications from day 2; issuance of new work permits stopped from day 5, with the employer notified to fix the violation; from day 11, administrative fines and downgrade of the establishment to the third category where the violation repeats within six months, with a regulatory period of up to ten days before penalties apply; from day 16, labour disputes filed automatically for the affected workers plus suspension of work permits, with priority on establishments of 25 or more workers and on construction, transport and storage, security, cleaning, employment agencies and domestic-worker recruitment; and past day 21, for repeat violators employing 50 or more workers, referral to the Public Prosecution, executive bonds to collect wages, precautionary attachment of assets and a travel ban on the person responsible.

We could not open the resolution’s text from outside the UAE to reproduce the schedule verbatim, so treat the day numbers above as reported rather than quoted, and verify against the official PDF or MOHRE (800 665) before acting. The direction, though, is unambiguous, and MOHRE says monitoring is risk-based with particular focus on labour-intensive sectors where delayed wages hit hardest (MOHRE, June 2026). A 60-truck fleet is precisely that profile: 25-plus workers, transport sector, wages the largest monthly cash event. A work-permit freeze on day 5 does not just cost money; it stops you replacing the driver who quit last week.

Who is excluded from WPS?

Fewer parties than fleets hope. Per the coverage of Resolution 340/2026 at implementation, excluded worker categories include those with wage claims already before the courts, workers with a registered absconding report, workers on unpaid leave with documents filed, foreign workers who receive salaries abroad from foreign establishments, and holders of temporary work permits of three months or less. Excluded employer categories: fishing boats and public taxis owned by citizens, banks, and places of worship (reported June 2026; the earlier u.ae list under Resolution 598/2022 was near-identical and also excluded new employees in their first 30 days).

Nothing in any published list excludes small fleets, free-zone-registered transport companies fall under their own authorities rather than MOHRE in some cases, and “we pay cash because the drivers prefer it” appears nowhere. The resolution does allow delegating payment to another entity if MOHRE is notified of the delegate and its powers, but liability for paying on time stays with the establishment. If you believe a category applies to you, confirm it with MOHRE before relying on it, the same advice we give for Asateel exemptions, and for the same reason: the published carve-outs are narrower than the folklore.

How much does a truck driver earn in the UAE?

There is no admissible public answer, and we will not invent one. UAE law stipulates no minimum salary (u.ae, checked 2026), MOHRE publishes no wage table by occupation, and the salary-aggregator pages that rank for “truck driver salary in UAE” are unverified self-reported samples, which is why the figures disagree with each other by a factor of two. Any specific number we printed here would be folklore with confidence formatting.

What a fleet operator actually needs is different anyway: not the market’s average pay, but your own fully loaded cost per driver, because that is the number that belongs in cost per km and in every quote you price. That you can compute exactly, from your own payroll, and the components are fixed by law rather than by rumour: basic wage, contractual allowances, overtime at the Labour Law’s premiums, gratuity accruing every month whether or not anyone books it, and the visa, permit and medical costs of keeping the seat filled. The next section walks the method.

How do you compute a driver’s fully loaded monthly cost?

Add six components, all from documents you already hold. The example figures below are illustrative labels, not benchmarks; substitute your own contract values.

Component	Source	Illustrative (AED/month)
B, basic wage	employment contract	2,500
A, allowances (housing, food, site)	employment contract	1,300
OT, overtime	timesheets × Labour Law premium	260
G, gratuity accrual	5.83% × B	146
V, visa, permit, medical, insurance	two-year costs ÷ 24	230
P, WPS and payroll processing	bank/agent fees (employer-borne)	30
Fully loaded total		4,466

Three components carry rules worth knowing. Overtime: the Labour Law caps extra time at two hours per day and prices it at the basic-wage hourly rate plus 25%, rising to plus 50% between 22:00 and 04:00, and a worker sent out on the contractual rest day gets a substitute day or plus 50% (u.ae working-hours page, updated March 2025). Night haulage fleets should model the 50% band explicitly. Gratuity: 21 days of basic wage per year of service for the first five years, 30 days per year after that, calculated on basic only (u.ae, Article 51 of Federal Decree-Law No. 33 of 2021). Twenty-one days over a 30-day month is 5.83% of basic per month, the same rate the government’s optional Savings Scheme uses for employer contributions in the first five years, which is a convenient cross-check. WPS processing: the employer bears it by rule, so it belongs in the driver line, not in a general bank-charges bucket.

In this illustration the fully loaded cost is about 1.79 times basic. Whatever your actual numbers, the ratio will land well above 1: a fleet budgeting drivers at basic salary is underestimating its largest human cost by a third or more.

How does driver pay change your cost per km?

Driver cost is a fixed monthly cost, so what moves it per km is utilisation, not the salary line. Take the illustrative AED 4,466 above: at 4,000 km in a month it is AED 1.12 per km; at 2,500 km, AED 1.79. Same driver, same contract, 60% more cost per km, purely because the truck moved less. Fuel scales with distance; the person in the cab does not. That is why a parked truck with a paid driver is quietly the most expensive vehicle in the yard, and why driver cost belongs beside depreciation and registration in the fixed block of any per-km model, the method our true cost per km guide for tippers builds in full.

The second effect is allocation. Overtime is the one driver component that varies by assignment, and it varies by customer: the contract that keeps trucks queuing at a batching plant until 23:00 generates night-band overtime at plus 50% that a daytime aggregate run never touches. If overtime sits in a single payroll total, every customer looks equally profitable and the late-night one is subsidised by the rest. Splitting driver cost to the vehicles and jobs that caused it is a cost allocation problem, the same discipline as splitting fuel or Salik, and it is the difference between knowing your fleet’s average margin and knowing which contract erodes it.

How does Fleetric handle WPS and driver cost?

Fleetric is a fleet profit intelligence platform for GCC fleets, in daily production with a construction fleet in Abu Dhabi, that reads mandated tracking feeds and computes per-vehicle profit. Payroll ships as an opt-in module: it computes overtime from Labour Law settings against recorded hours, accrues gratuity per worker month by month, and generates the UAE SIF file, the Salary Information File your bank or exchange house submits into WPS, so the pay run that keeps you compliant is produced from the same records that cost your trucks. Driver cost then flows into each vehicle’s P&L automatically, which is what makes the cost-per-km arithmetic above a report rather than a spreadsheet exercise. How it works shows the flow end to end.

Honestly stated: Fleetric is early stage, in daily production with one Abu Dhabi construction fleet, and publishes its pricing at AED 120 (Starter) and AED 95 (Pro) per truck per month on the pricing page. It is payroll and profit software, not a WPS agent: the transfer itself still runs through your bank, exchange house or finance company, exactly as the regulations require.

WPS rules last reviewed against MOHRE and u.ae sources on 21 August 2026. This is marketing information, not legal advice; resolutions, thresholds and timelines change, so verify with MOHRE (800 665) before acting on any figure here.

FAQ

What is the Wage Protection System (WPS) in the UAE?

An electronic salary transfer system developed with the Central Bank of the UAE that requires private-sector establishments registered with MOHRE to pay workers’ wages through approved banks, exchange houses and financial institutions, so the Ministry can verify wages were paid in full and on time. It has run since 2009 and covers more than 99% of private-sector workers (MOHRE, 2025).

Do transport companies have to pay drivers through WPS?

Yes. Every establishment registered with MOHRE must pay wages through WPS or another system the Ministry adopts, and transport and storage is one of the sectors named for priority enforcement in the escalation reported under Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026, alongside construction, security, cleaning and recruitment.

When are salaries due under the 2026 WPS rules?

On the first day of each Gregorian month for the previous month’s work, under Ministerial Resolution No. 340 of 2026, effective 1 June 2026. Any payment after that date counts as a delay. The resolution repealed Ministerial Resolution No. 598 of 2022, which had allowed up to 15 days after the due date before an employer was in default.

What is the 85% WPS compliance rule?

MOHRE considers an establishment compliant if it transfers at least 85% of the total wages due to its workers within the specified timeframe (MOHRE statement, June 2026). The margin absorbs edge cases such as disputed leavers, not routine short-paying, and the unpaid workers’ entitlements remain owed in full.

What happens if a company pays salaries late?

As reported when Resolution 340 of 2026 took effect, electronic alerts start on day 2 after the due date, new work permits stop from day 5, administrative fines and reclassification follow from day 11, labour disputes are filed and permits suspended from day 16, and from day 21 repeat violators with 50 or more workers face referral to the Public Prosecution. Verify the current schedule with MOHRE.

Who is excluded from WPS?

Per the coverage of Resolution 340 of 2026, workers with wage claims before the courts, workers with a registered absconding report, workers on unpaid leave, foreign workers paid abroad by foreign establishments, and holders of temporary work permits of three months or less; on the employer side, citizen-owned fishing boats and public taxis, banks and places of worship. Confirm any exclusion with MOHRE.

What is a SIF file in WPS?

The Salary Information File, the structured salary file an employer’s bank, exchange house or finance company submits into WPS for each pay run. It lists each worker, the period and the amounts, and it is the record MOHRE’s monitoring checks wage payments against. Payroll software that outputs a valid SIF removes the manual re-typing step.

What is the average truck driver salary in the UAE?

No admissible public benchmark exists. UAE law stipulates no minimum salary (u.ae, 2026), MOHRE publishes no wage table for drivers, and salary-aggregator figures are unverified self-reports. The useful number is your own fully loaded cost per driver, basic plus allowances, overtime, gratuity accrual, visa and medical costs, which you can compute from your own payroll in an hour.

How does driver salary affect cost per km?

Driver pay is a fixed monthly cost, so cost per km depends on utilisation. A fully loaded driver cost of AED 4,466 per month (illustrative) is AED 1.12 per km at 4,000 km per month but AED 1.79 at 2,500 km. Only fuel varies with distance; the driver costs the same parked or driving.

Does Fleetric generate WPS salary files?

Yes. Fleetric ships payroll as an opt-in module that computes overtime from Labour Law settings, accrues gratuity per worker, and generates the UAE SIF file for WPS submission through your bank or exchange house. Driver cost then flows into each vehicle’s P&L, so cost per km includes the person in the cab.