25,000 Omani jobs target hit; ban on hiring expats ongoing

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The policy of providing jobs for Omanis ahead of expats will continue even after the government target of 25,000 jobs is reached, according to an official at the Ministry of Manpower (MoM).

The MoM announced that 24,945 Omanis had now found work, after it introduced a ban on hiring expats in 87 professions in January this year and set a target of 25,000 jobs for Omanis by May, and with a mere 55 jobs left to be found, the ministry announced that Omanis should always be favoured over expats when it came to hiring in the Sultanate, especially when skillsets matched, according to a recent report by the Times of Oman.

Statistics show that the 24,945 Omanis were employed in private sector institutions across the Sultanate between December 2017 and 23 April 2018. Salim Al Hadrami, Director General of Planning and Development at MoM, told the Times of Oman, without giving further details, that the target of hiring 25,000 Omanis would be met this week.

The construction sector hired the majority of workers, 32.4 per cent, followed by the wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, transportation sectors employing 14.5, 13.5 per cent, and 7.1 per cent respectively. MoM data shows that 16,884 of those recruited were men and 8,061 were women, with 48 per cent of the total number holding below diploma degrees, 34 per cent have diploma degrees, and 18 per cent had higher education degrees.

The ban on hiring expats is set to continue for as long as there are Omanis available to fill the positions. The sectors affected by the ban include IT, media, air traffic, engineering, accounting and finance, technicians, insurance, marketing and sales, administration and HR.

The highest Omanisation rate is in financial and insurance activity, at 80.4 per cent. In the private sector, clerical professions saw the highest rate of Omanisation at 95.5 per cent. In the government sector, Omanis amount to 87 per cent of the employees.