Thursday 18 / April / 2024
Muscat: It’s the issue bosses don’t want to talk about, whether they give No Objection Certificates (NOC) to expat workers leaving their companies after successfully completing their first two-year contracts.
Also read: Plan to scrap No Objection Certificates in Oman
After receiving complaints from workers who say they are routinely being denied NOCs for no reason, Times of Oman contacted 100 companies across the Sultanate of Oman.
Those contacted included banks and financial services, hotel chains and tourism services, retailers, multinational industrial firms, construction companies, airlines, hospitals, petroleum companies, communication services, automotive brands and private schools.
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Of those 100 organisations, 60 companies failed to respond to the question: “Assuming there are no disciplinary factors involved, do you give expat employees a No Objection Certificate on completion of their first two-year contract? If yes, why? If no, why not?”
A further nine companies admitted they don’t while 31 said they do.
Read here: The ordeal of an expat who was denied NOC in Oman
One that does is Al Turki Enterprises. Devak Khimji, Executive Director, told Times of Oman, “Yes we do give NOCs, we have given it to several people unless they are found adversely affecting our company during their working tenure.”
Wilson V George, Board of Directors’ Chairman of Indian Schools in the Sultanate also said his company granted NOCs.
He said: ““We do not have a policy ‘to reject NOC’ request. Our employee turnover is very low and such requests rarely come up. In the last two years we have had two requests for NOCs and we provided them. Those employees were with us for more than five years.”
And one government-owned company said, “We don’t want to stop our employees from growing, so we give NOCs to them at the end of their contract periods. No NOC request has come to us by an expat in the middle of their working period yet, but if that comes, we will give it too.”
A spokesperson of the Petroleum Development of Oman (PDO) also said, “Yes we give NOCs to our expatriates employees at the end of their contract. However, this privilege is exclusively granted to good leavers and done after collaboration with the line and function.” However, companies happy to confirm they will give NOCs to workers are in the minority, and trade representatives still backing the scheme.
“I’m actually with the ones who do not give the NOCs, because if you think about it, you have trained this employee and taught him essential skills, but in the end the employee would decide to resign and go to a competitor,” said Mohammad Al Badi, Economic Committee Member at the Majlis Al Shura.
“Before the NOC rule came in place to regulate the workforce, we had an employee that we trained well and he knows our prices. After he resigned and went to another company, they started to compete with us; because now they know our prices from him,” he added.
Said bin Nasser Al Saadi, the advisor to the Minister for Manpower, recently told Times of Oman that the NOC scheme was under review, especially after the UAE and Qatar moved to scrap similar schemes.
OCCI member Ahmed Al Hooti said NOCs should only be issued case by case. “Omani way (policies) is quite different from other countries. We have a good number of expat employees who are not trained or qualified in Oman. The problem here is that employees leave their jobs to set up their businesses, and then they want to compete with their previous sponsors. That is one of the reasons companies don’t want to issue NOC,” he told Times of Oman. “But I think companies should give NOC if the employees want to switch jobs and not to set up their business.”
Out of the three hotels that responded to our survey, only one said that they give NOCs upon the completion of two years.
When asked why they don’t give NOCs prior to the two years ending, they said: “We usually end up losing our clearance. When we lose one expat, we would like to replace them; however it’s very hard getting a clearance.”
Deepa Sudhir, a legal advisor in Muscat, said that NOC remains at the sole discretion of the employer.
“He can say yes and no. The employee doesn’t stand a chance to question it in the court if he is denied,” the lawyer said.
However, when asked whether a clause to provide NOC for those who have completed two-year job contract successfully should not be denied NOC, she said that she cannot comment.
Mohammed Al Farji, a trade unionist, said that NOC should stay, however, those who complete the two-year job contract successfully should not be stopped in changing companies only because he doesn’t have a NOC.
