In Oman expats find visa renewal easier for jobs not on Omanisation list

Visa renewals of expatriates who are employed in departments that are not in the Omanisation category are happening with relative ease but for jobs listed for Omanisation, the path is not so smooth.

An HR officer in a leading Omanese automobile company Kumar Mohan said, “The number of expatriates working in any industry in Oman today is comparatively much lesser than what it used to be two years back.”

Mohan said many positions like commercial promoters and assistants, purchase executives, and many such positions are now Omanised.

Expats whose clearance materialized for these now Omanized positions are facing difficulty when it comes to their visa renewal, Mohan said and added that changing the position to get the clearance means the concerned will have to first exit the country and come back on a new visa.

“Under the current situation, many are trying to avoid getting into this stage but there isn’t much that can be done in this regard.”

Private sector

As part of an intense Omanisation drive, a visa ban on specific job roles in private sectors were also introduced by the sultanate’s labour ministry.

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New visa issuance including visit and tourist visas is currently on hold but is expected to open soon according to reports from reliable sources, the local media reported.

The labour ministry had during the first quarter of this year created 10,000 jobs for Omanis against the 32,000 targets for this year.

Out of the 10,000 jobs provided to Omanis, 4,000 were in the government sector, with the rest in other sectors that included on-job training programmes which were part of employment deal.