Sunday 08 / June / 2025
Muscat: More than 62,000 Omani job-seekers have been hired in the private sector as of the end of November, but Majlis Al Shura is asking for more to be done to make it easier to hire talented Omanis.
According to officials from the Ministry of Manpower, 22,000 of those hired for jobs were new graduates, who were employed in the private sector as part of the country’s policy of Omanisation.
Regarding employing nationals, Salim bin Nasser Al Hadhrami, Director General of Planning and Development at the Ministry of Manpower, said, “62,403 job seekers have been hired in private sector institutions between December, 2017 and the end of November.”
“This is part of the Omani government’s drive to hire 25,000 job-seekers by the end of December. There were 45,711 job-seekers in the country at the end of November. 17,272 were males and 28,439 were females,” he said.
According to Al Hadhrami, South and North Batinah governorates top other governorates in the number of job-seekers, with 33 per cent. He pointed out that the some companies did not want to pay high wages for Omani graduates, stressing, “There will be a crisis in hiring Omanis with higher qualifications, as it is related to the economy.”
He emphasised that foreign manpower was a source of competition for the national workforce when it came to jobs. The financial sector is the sector which hired most Omanis, followed by telecom, electricity and water, and the oil and gas sectors.
To further aid the Omanisation drive, Shura, in collaboration with the Public Authority for Industrial Estates, held a meeting to discuss what companies were going to do to make hiring Omanis an easier process.
“The members of the Youth Committee put forward a number of questions and suggestions, including the plans of the Public Authority for Industrial Estates to raise the attractiveness of industrial zones for entrepreneurs and owners of small and medium enterprises, and the role of the institution in increasing the Omanisation rate in firms operating in industrial areas through the implementation of replacement policies,” said a spokesman from Shura Council.
This included the setting up of an industrial academy, which will train Omanis to better equip them to handle jobs in the various industrial sectors the company has, and is expected to set up, in the future as part of the Tanfeedh plans for economic development, jobs in manufacturing, logistics, transport, mining, energy, agriculture and fisheries, which are all being earmarked alongside tourism for future expansion.
“This industrial academy was established to contribute to the Omanisation and rehabilitation, and will be launched in 2019,” said Hilal Al Hosni, CEO of the Public Authority for Industrial Estates, or Madain.
Also, Mohammed Al Busaidi, head of the Youth Committee at the Majlis Al Shura, noted, “The proportion of Omanisation in the private sector, especially in jobs where there are Omani job seekers, should increase to 80 per cent in some professions.’
Al Busaidi added that the percentage of Omanisation should be reviewed according to the criteria that are commensurate with the incomes of the companies, so as to ensure that companies meet these percentages and increase this percentage annually.
With regards to the issues surrounding job-seekers, he added, “We need long-term solutions to this file so that they are sustainable solutions and that we do not just put in place immediate or urgent solutions. This concern is very large and needs to have one body concerned with employment of job seekers, which is the national centre for employment, which was approved by Tanfeedh, the national programme for enhancing economic diversification. The centre will be the one station that deals with job seekers and coordinates with all parties.”
Visa ban
The government of Oman decided to step up its Omanisation campaign at the beginning of 2018, with the imposition of a six-month visa ban for expatriates across 87 jobs. The ban was further extended in July.
Enforcement of the ban began on January 28, 2018, to make room for locals within the workforce, with the hiring freeze coming into effect following the issuance of ministerial decree 2018/38, which was issued by Minister of Manpower Abdullah bin Nasser Al Bakri. In July, it was extended for another six months.
According to the NCSI, of the 2,041,190 workers in the private sector, only 250,717 are Omanis, with the vast majority – 87.72 per cent – being expatriates. More than 40,000 Omanis have been given jobs in private sector companies, as part of the Omanisation policy.
The NCSI further reports that the unemployment rate for Omanis between the ages of 25 and 29 dropped 13.6 per cent over the last month, by 11 per cent for those between 30 and 34 years, and by 7.1 per cent for locals from 35 to 39 years of age, as companies begin to carry out the national Omanisation policy.
The biggest drop in expat labour was in the construction sector, which decreased by 13.69 per cent in October 2018.
The manufacturing (5.2 per cent), engineering (6.8 per cent), industrial (5.9 per cent), mining (6.47 per cent), agriculture (1.4 per cent), and finance (2.1 per cent) sectors also showed a rise in the number of Omanis replacing expats.
