Muscat – With more jobs becoming available to citizens, the minimum wage for Omanis may be reviewed – as has been demanded for many years – by a joint committee in the second half of 2022.

H E Dr Mahad bin Said Ali Ba’owain, Minister of Labour, has stated that it is the responsibility of joint committees to review minimum wages. “A review may be conducted during the second half of this year,” he said.

According to H E Dr Ba’owain, the ministry did not do so earlier due to the economic situation many businesses are facing. “We did not want to pressurise the private sector by asking them to raise the minimum wage because that would affect local employment,” he said.

He informed that there are more than 3,000 categories of professions and between 180,000 and 250,000 vacancies across sectors.

The ministry is currently focusing on employing Omanis in specialist, technical and med-level positions. It is currently working with the Ministry of Education to provide jobs in the education sector.

By December 2021, as many as 40,000 Omanis were employed reducing the total number of registered jobseekers to about 50,000 currently.