Citizens responsible for proxy trade, minister says

Muscat: Oman’s Manpower Minister, Shaikh Abdullah Bin Nasir Al Bakri, has put the ball in the court of citizens to curb the practice of ‘proxy trade’ when he was grilled by the elected members of the 84-seat Majlis Asshura on Sunday.

A representative from Salalah charged that the Ministry of Manpower itself was the cause of proxy trade and the increased numbers of absconding expatriate workers.

The minister, in his reply, categorically denied the accusations.

“Who is responsible for proxy trade? How many citizens get their trade licenses registered for selling it to expatriates along with an option of recruiting expatriate staff?” he asked the member.

He claimed that the evidence about citizens handing over their trade licenses for a price to expatriates was with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. “You will be astonished at the number of trade licenses issued,” he said amid loud objections from some of the members, according to a report published in government-owned Arabic daily Oman.

The minister went on to say that recruitment of expatriate manpower should be made only for those who deserve and in accordance with specific mechanisms, particularly in the case of domestic workers.

Earlier Al Bakri gave a speech that covered technical education and vocational training plans and programmes aimed at increasing the admission of students at technical colleges, the expansion of study programmes and training and the diversification of disciplines to meet the needs of the labour market.

The minister noted that a high rate of instability and changing of jobs among citizens in the private sector was due to resignations, termination of service or dismissal.

According to the statistics provided by the Minister, 410,796 citizens were placed at various private sector establishments from 2006-2011. “205,284, almost 50 per cent, either resigned or were dismissed,” Al Bakri revealed, noting that resignations continued in 2012 from the private sector because of the lure of the public sector.

The Minister of Manpower added that results of the studies conducted by the Ministry in co-operation with the Public Authority for Social Insurance and the competent authorities indicated that the main causes of this phenomenon include the low level of wages, poor career opportunities, the difficulty of adapting to the working environment and the need to be fluent in the English language.

“The government is taking steps to address the phenomenon,” he claimed.

“English is therefore an obstacle to Omanisation of jobs in the private sector,” the representative from Taqa, Salim Bin Mohammad Al Mash’ani, complained, adding that Omanis wishing to join the sector from among those who cannot speak English are merely dismissed as less intelligent, less capable of taking up jobs.

Al Mash’ani said the English language had become a pretext to employ expatriates at the cost of national manpower.

In his reply, the minister said: “We should not isolate ourselves from the rest of the world and we should learn and teach languages which will be a gain for our children. We should not be compared with China or European states because we are a growing country.”