Muscat: Oman’s minister of manpower has issued a decision regulating the part-time work based on the suggestions that were put by the labour labs of Tanfeedh in 2016.

Tanfeedh is a national initiative which is part of the 9th Five-Year Development Plan (2016-2020, and was launched in collaboration with the Malaysian government’s “Performance Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU). It aims to enhance economic diversification and build upon the achievements of the previous plans, with a focus on targeted sectors.

The targeted sectors include tourism, transport and logistics, mining, and fisheries.

The decision said that Omanis to be employed part-time for not less than four hours daily and not more than 25 hours a week. The decision stipulates that the employer should pay a minimum wage of three riyals per hour to the worker. The decision allows students aged between 15 to 17 years to work in part-time jobs between 6am to 6pm.

The employer has to provide insurance to the worker against work injuries from one of the approved insurance companies in the country.

The work contract should include the work hours, work days, hourly wage and type of work. The employer should also register part time employees with the Ministry of Manpower.

Economic experts believe that the decision will provide more jobs especially for Omani school students, and provide experience that could eventually help them to join the labour market easily after they graduate from school.

There were 43,858 jobseekers in Oman at the end of 2016, according to the figures released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).

A majority of jobseekers were in the age group 25 to 29 years and most of them were college graduates, according to statistics.

The number of jobseekers slightly increased by 0.1 per cent up to end of December 2016 (15,831 males and 28,027 females) against November of the same year.

The jobseekers’ number stood at 20,869 within the age group of 25 to 29 years, followed by the age group 18 to 24 years (12,700), while the number stood at 7,231 for the age group 30 to 34 years and 2,735 for the age group 35 to 39 years and 323 job seekers in the age group of more than 40 years.

In total, the number of migrant workers stood at 1,848,175 by the end of December, according to the NCSI. 1,504,936 of them are working in the private sector, 60,196 in the government sector, while 283,043 are working for families, as domestic help and drivers.