Thursday 21 / November / 2024
Muscat: Creating more jobs and training opportunities for talented Omanis continues to remain a priority, a senior official at the Ministry of Labour has said.
His Excellency Sayyid Salim Al Busaidi, the undersecretary for human resources development at the Ministry of Labour, said that efforts are being taken to employ more nationals across all sectors in the country.
“We provided employment for 600 female and male nurses in the government sector, under the Employment Associated Training Programme,” said the undersecretary. “More than 140 nurses were also assigned to the private sector under this scheme.
“Furthermore, we also sent 400 technicians to the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, they will be employed in two years, under a training programme associated with employment,” he said. “This is a replacement programme which involves training batches of 200 people over a span of two years and then providing them employment.”
Al Busaidi added that the ministry achieved more than 59 per cent of the targeted plans during the first six months of 2021. With the resumption of regular flights, which were halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the reopening of commercial and industrial activities, it is hoped that the labour market will improve, and the economic sectors operating in Oman will show positive development.
“We are continuing to work towards developing the labour market,” he added. “It is true that all of the sectors in Oman were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, as is the case for all the countries in the world.
“However, the recent decisions of the Supreme Committee, and an increasing number of vaccinated people, among other developments, will help in reviving the market and turning the wheel of development, which will help provide employment for job seekers.”
There were 257,176 Omanis working in the country’s private sector as of July 2021, according to data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), compared to 254,754 workers at the end of last year.
There are 54,635 Omanis employed by construction companies, which represent the largest employer of locals in the private sector, followed by the automobile industry, which has another 37,560 nationals.
The number of expatriates working in the private sector has fallen to 1.102 million in July 2021, from 1.148 million at the end of 2020, representing nearly a four per cent drop.
About 3,000 expatriates also left the government sector, which employed 42,240 foreign nationals in December 2020.
The construction sector employs more than 380,000 expatriates, while manufacturing accounts for another 167,000. There are more than 100,000 workers employed in the hospitality sector, and some 180,000 employed for household activities.
