Omanisation

Omanisation is a government campaign dreamt up about 20 years ago to ensure not only a job for each Omani citizen, but also to reduce Oman's heavy dependence on expatriates (who account for approximately a quarter of the entire population). To ensure that Omanisation is working effectively, every place of work must, by law, employ a certain number of Omanis.

Here are the official Omanisation requirements as stipulated by His Majesty's Ministry:

Ministry 73%
Transport, storage and communications 60%
Finance, insurance and real estate 45%
Industry 35%
Hotels and restaurants 30%
Wholesale or retail trading 20%
Contracting 15%

As you can clearly see, all the cushy jobs have a much higher percentage of Omani workers than the shitty jobs which are filled with cheap expatriate labour. As everybody knows but seldom admits in public, the more Omanis you have to deal with, the longer it takes to get anything done. This is evident in the service you receive in the various sectors.

Attempting to get anything done involving the Ministry is a complete no-go unless you have a certain amount of wasta and can pull some strings (almost every Omani has a brother who works in the Ministry). Anything involving a mobile phone, a SIM card or an internet connection faster than dial-up takes months and a trip to the bank is one of the most frustrating experiences available in Muscat.

Further down the Omanisation pecking order are hotels and restaurants. Here we start to see more Filipinos and the service and general standard of staff markedly increases as the Omanis generally hide away in the back. The college where I work was set-up specifically to increase Omanisation in this area, the problem being that almost all our students want to walk straight into a management job (cleaning dishes to start with is beneath them) they will clearly never be capable of. A little further down still and we hit the supermarkets where the general experience is of fully stocked shelves but tremendously long queues at the checkouts. The reason for this is that expatriates (mainly Filipinos and Indians) are hired for shelf-stacking, but only Omanis are allowed to operate cash registers.

Right down at the bottom we have the contracting sector. This sector is full of Indian expatriates who work 12-hour shifts in 40-degree heat building Muscat's roads and houses, keeping the city streets and business premises spotlessly clean, looking after Omani children or just slaving away as house maids. The pay they receive varies from OMR 30-100 (£50-£150) a month of which most is sent home to the families they have left behind to try and pay for a house and a decent education for their children. It sounds quite cold when I see it written like that.

Sadly though, it's just the way things are out here.