Employment Practice: Living Wage
Maldives National University | Data as at December 2025
Our commitment
Maldives National University pays every member of staff at least a living wage. We measure this against the national poverty line for a family of four, expressed as an hourly wage. Our staff are paid on the national public service pay scales, which are published, apply to everyone in the same grade and are set by the position and not by the person who holds it.
Result
Every post on the University’s pay scales pays more than the hourly wage that the national poverty line implies for a family of four.
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Measure
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Amount
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National poverty line for a family of four, at 2025 prices
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MVR 9,575.70 a month
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The same line as an hourly wage, over a full-time 48-hour week of 208 hours a month
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MVR 46.04 an hour
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Lowest-paid post at the University, an administrative support post on a 30-hour week
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MVR 63.87 an hour (MVR 8,303.45 a month)
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The lowest-paid post compared with the hourly poverty line
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1.4 times
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National public sector minimum wage
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MVR 33.65 an hour and MVR 7,000 a month
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The lowest-paid post compared with the hourly minimum wage
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1.9 times
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Lowest academic post
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MVR 20,657 a month (MVR 99.31 an hour over 208 hours), 2.2 times the poverty line
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The lowest-paid administrative post is paid for a 30-hour week. Staff in these posts are paid overtime for work beyond 30 hours, at the rates the Employment Act sets, and overtime is additional to the amounts above.
How we measure it
The Maldives has no nationally defined living wage. We therefore use the nearest official measure, the national poverty line for a family of four, and express it as an hourly wage.
- Poverty line. The national poverty line is MVR 71.4 per person a day (MVR 2,172.6 a month) at 2019/20 prices, from the 2019/20 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (Maldives Poverty Assessment 2022, Table 1.1; the same line is used in the Asian Development Bank’s 2025 poverty mapping). Multiplied by four, it is MVR 8,690.40 a month.
- Updated to 2025 prices. We adjusted the line by the annual average change in the Consumer Price Index from 2019 to 2025, a cumulative 10.2%, which gives MVR 9,575.70 a month for a family of four. The Maldives Bureau of Statistics publishes the annual changes: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
- Hourly wage. We divide the monthly line by the 208 hours of a full-time 48-hour week, the maximum the Employment Act
- Pay counted. Basic salary plus the fixed allowances in the pay scale. Overtime and other variable payments are not counted, which matches the national Minimum Wage Order (in force from 1 January 2022).
The lowest pay scale point
The Single Spine Salary Structure, revised on 18 September 2025, sets the lowest point (spine 10) at a gross pay of MVR 8,303.45 a month: basic salary MVR 4,668.61, service allowance MVR 2,000.83 and special duty allowance MVR 1,634.01. The structures for Academic Professionals, Functional Professionals, Higher Education Managers and Vocational Education Professionals have applied since 1 March 2023. The National Pay Commission publishes the job matrices behind them.
Overtime
Under Section 37 of the Employment Act, overtime is worked where the employment agreement provides for it and is paid at 1.25 times the hourly salary on a normal working day and 1.5 times on a Friday or public holiday. Section 38 gives an employee who works normal hours on a public holiday at least half of a day’s minimum wage in addition to overtime. The Employment Act has been in force since July 2008, limits the working week to 48 hours and requires a contract between worker and employer, and the University applies its overtime rules through the Civil Service Regulation and its internal practice.
Tax and pension
Income tax applies only to monthly remuneration above MVR 60,000 (Maldives Inland Revenue Authority). The University contributes to each employee’s retirement pension under the Maldives Pension Act (Act No. 8/2009) and the Regulation on Determining Pensionable Wage (2021/R-27), listed on the Pension Office website.
Outsourced workers
The Policy on Equivalent Rights for Outsourced and Third-Party Workers (MNU/UC/2026/14, effective 27 October 2026) requires contractors to follow minimum wage orders. The University does not award a contract to a bidder whose pricing cannot meet them.
Poverty in the Maldives
About thirty years before the 2010 national report on the Millennium Development Goals, the Maldives was among the 20 poorest countries in the world, and by 2004 the country had achieved the target of halving extreme poverty (Millennium Development Goals: Maldives Country Report 2010, Goal 1). More recently, the share of people below the national poverty line fell from 14.58% in 2009/10 to 5.4% in 2019/20, and from 11.97% to 0.9% in Malé and from 16.03% to 9.5% in the atolls (Maldives Bureau of Statistics; Maldives Poverty Assessment 2022). The two surveys set their lines separately, at half of median expenditure, so the comparison shows the direction of change. National prices in 2025 rose 4.04% on the 2024 average, and 0.41% over the year to December 2025 (Consumer Price Index, December 2025).
Poverty beyond income
Income is one part of poverty. The Maldives Bureau of Statistics, with UNICEF, also publishes a national Multidimensional Poverty Index, first released in 2020. It measures deprivation in three equally weighted dimensions (health, education and information, and housing) through eight indicators, including years of schooling, internet access, safe drinking water, sewerage and overcrowding, and counts a person as poor if deprived in more than a third of the weighted indicators. The report states that the index complements the income poverty measure and encourages the public to look beyond monetary poverty.
Using data from the Demographic and Health Survey, the share of people who are multidimensionally poor fell from 70.2% in 2009 to 28.4% in 2016/17, and the index value fell from 0.425 to 0.145. In 2016/17 the share was 9.6% in Malé and 40.3% in the atolls, where 87% of the multidimensionally poor lived. The share of people below the national income poverty line in the 2016 household income survey was 8.2%, with a line of MVR 74 a person a day, so deprivation in health, education and housing extends beyond those below the income line (Multidimensional Poverty in Maldives 2020, Tables 3.1 to 3.3, 4.1 and 4.2, and Chapter 1). Paying a wage above the income poverty line is therefore one contribution to reducing poverty. The University also contributes through education and through the employment standards described on this card.
How this is governed
Maldives National University is a public university established by the Maldives National University Act (Law No. 3/2011). Since its establishment, it has paid its staff on the published national public service scales, in compliance with the laws and regulations that apply to the public sector, including the Employment Act (Act No. 2/2008), the National Pay Policy Act (Act No. 11/2016) and the Civil Service Regulation. The National Pay Commission reviews the scales nationally.
Related pages and policies
Sources
Policy owner: Human Resources. Data as at December 2025.
