Indian firm hires 1,000 Omani females in Sohar

Energy Saturday 15/June/2019 20:42 PM
By: Times News Service
Indian firm hires 1,000 Omani females in Sohar

Muscat: An Indian company working in the Sohar Economic Zone has hired 1,000 Omani women in 2019 alone, with plans to triple that number in the coming years using a special training centre for new recruits.
SV Pittie Sohar Textile FZC LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of India-based SVP Global Ventures Ltd, has recently inaugurated its cotton yarn training facility, which aims to train Omani women in cotton yarn manufacture as well as other textile manufacturing jobs.
Chirag Pittie, Managing Director of the group, said that the training facilities and the company itself will be invaluable to Omanis, the highest segment employed at the company.
Pittie said during the inauguration ceremony, “The factory has an 85 per cent Omanisation rate, and most of the people working in this sector are women. 1,000 women have been hired during this year, 2,000 will be employed next year, and the entire project is expected to provide nearly 3,000 when the fourth unit of the factory is complete.”
Omani women at the centre have praised SV Pittie’s approach to dealing with female Omani employees, as well as how many opportunities they find at the company.
Halima Al Farsi, an employee at the training centre, said: “I have been employed for three months and am in charge of taking care of contracts and sorting the employees into classes. This is a job that I trained for here, and they also taught us how to take care of the employees and interact with them properly.
“One of the special traits of this company is how it hires a large number of women, which will absolutely help in absorbing female Omani jobseekers. This benefit has a lot to do with how the management thinks of us and tries to treat us well.”
Maha Al Raisi, one of the trainees at the centre, said, “I truly wanted to train and learn and this was reflected in my performance.
“I’m convinced that the training period will benefit me, as I aspire to have a future in this company, and I advise my colleagues to work hard on their studies.
“The environment at the company is one of the reasons to work here, and the company takes care of you and respects you.”
The ceremony, which took place under the auspices of Abdullah bin Sha’ban Al Farsi, the Director General of Administration and Financial Affairs at the Diwan of the Royal Court, also involved setting the foundation for the fourth unit of the factory.
According to Pittie, SV Pittie Sohar Textile FZC LLC’s cotton-yarn project in the Sohar Economic Zone aims to provide Oman with many of its textile need, starting from cotton to wool to final products, and that they are “currently studying the possibility of planting cotton in Oman itself,” adding that the company aims to place Oman on the list as the world’s most important producers of cotton yarn while hoping to provide other products down the supply chain in time.
Job opportunities
He added, that the biggest benefit of the project is to find direct and indirect job opportunities for Omanis, as well as bringing money into the country.
Shaikha Al Jabri, one of the instructors at the centre, said, “The centre has a special training plan for women that lasts 14 months. During that time, the centre will train the women on the essentials for five days a week, split over four instructors.
“During the first three months, the trainees learn English, Information Technology, and Safety Procedures, after which these skills are tied to the actual skills of spinning threads and creating textiles. The training is not complicated and is open to everyone,” she added.
Bashair Al Kahali, another trainee, said, “We began training two months ago as the first class. Thankfully the training programme is manageable and the instructors cooperate with us.
“The training includes teaching us how to work the machines, as well as the safety hazards at work. We also learn how to deal with machines if they stop working.