Dubai: More than 300 stranded Sri Lankan expat workers have been repatriated from Oman, the Sri Lankan embassy said on Monday.
According to the embassy, 329 Sri Lankan nationals were repatriated on February 25. “Among the passengers were 81 stranded workers who had overstayed in the country,” an official said.
The repatriation was carried out in collaboration with the Presidential Secretariat, Foreign Ministry of Sri Lanka, and Srilankan Airline.
According to data released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the number of expatriates working in the Sultanate has fallen by 14 per cent to 1.439 million by the end of January this year. The decline in expat numbers is attributed to the replacement and nationalisation policy adopted by the Ministry of Labour.
According to the data, a total of 1.148 million expats work in the private sector, 41,000 in the public sector and 149,000 in the household sector.
The majority of expat workforce occupy engineering and assistant engineering jobs totalling 568,000 followed by service jobs at 415,000, food and petrochemical jobs (99,000), sales jobs (96,000) and technical jobs (42,000).
As per the qualifications, over 1 million expats hold certificates below the general education diploma (GED), 242,000 have GED certificates, 33,000 have higher education diploma, 114,000 have bachelor’s degree and 9,000 holdmaster’s and PhD degrees.
Bangladeshi nationals account for the majority of the expat workforce at 549,000 followed by Indians at 491,000, Pakistanis at 182,000 and Filipinos at 44,000.
A total of 587,000 expats are based in Muscat Governorate, 207,000 in North Al Batinah, 163,000 in Dhofar Governorate and 102,000 in Al Dakhiliyah Governorate.
