Thursday 25 / April / 2024
Muscat: A member of the Wages Protection Program team at the Ministry of Labour, Professor Saif bin Salem Al Zaabi, revealed that in the year 2022, the number of complaints submitted to the Ministry of Labour regarding workers in the private sector amounted to more than 24,000.
Al-Zaabi explained to the "With the Youth" program that more than 13,500 complaints were directly related to wages, i.e. more than 57%.
He said that it is clear why the Ministry of Labour is adopting the wage protection system, which, with its full implementation, will work to solve such problems without the worker resorting to submitting a complaint related to wages to the Ministry of Labour. Because the Ministry, through the Wage Protection System, will be informed directly and quickly of any violation by the employer regarding the late payment of the wages of his workers through the Wage Protection System.
Al-Zaabi added that the system will contribute to ensuring that the worker receives his wages at the time specified by the Labour Law and to the extent agreed upon. In addition to ensuring the registration of the national workforce in social insurance and ensuring the payment of their contributions. The system also contributes to facilitating research and settlement of labor disputes related to wages by providing wage transfer data to legal researchers.
The Wage Protection Program aims to create an accurate database of wages for private sector workers, and to monitor operations related to the payment of wages by following up the exchange movement in the workers' bank accounts through the Central Bank.
This joint program between the Ministry of Labor and the Central Bank of Oman comes in implementation of Article (53) of the Labour Law, which states, “The employer is not discharged from the worker’s wages unless the employer transfers the worker’s wages to his account in one of the accredited local banks, and cases are determined by a decision of the Minister.”
