Why is it that the Omani Government is so committed to relentless big infrastructure and industrial development? The cheap gas used to fire the new mid-stream industrial complexes in Sohar and Salalah; the insatiable ambition of Omran to plaster every beach with 5 star hotel tourism developments? Why even crazy sounding schemes like importing bauxite to make aluminum are executed.
The answer:
Population. There is a flood of young people coming to Oman’s employment market. The combination of 1st world health care and 3rd world rates of reproduction are upon us.
This is the population age pyramid for Oman next year. [ref:
NationMaster.com]. Ignore the middle age bump in the male population – those are the temporary foreign workers. But look what’s coming. Young people. By the 10s of thousands. Every year.
The economy cannot take these people. Not right now. The Government can hire a few thousand. Private firms similar numbers. A few thousand too can go to University (but that just delays the problem a few years). With ~80,000 high school graduates a year, that still leaves at least 50,000 a year unemployed. With no significant social welfare programme, this is starting to create a huge underclass of bored, badly educated, and poor, young adults. Without a job, or at least 3,000 rials, they can’t marry either, so add sexual frustration to the mix too.
The devil does find work for idle hands. Crime is growing. Parts of Al Ghubra are now best known for joy riding car thieves and vandalism. Petty theft and burglary in Al Kuwair. Prostitution in Ruwi. Rising religious extremism.
Unfortunately, the young are also unwilling to really work (I generalize of course*). There is a paternalistic entitlement culture. Everyone looks to the Government to provide the mana from heaven. The young want the cars, the clothes, the fast food, the phones, but don’t seem able to connect these desires with the need to work to pay for them. Many just want a soft job as a PRO. Or sitting at a computer surfing the net part-time in one of the Ministries. Meanwhile they sponge off their increasingly hard pressed parents to fund their lifestyle and provide accommodation and food.
So, what to do?
In some areas I think we’re doing really well: Banking, the Military and the Oil and Gas industries (upstream and downstream), are all highly Omanised.
However, large swathes of the Omani domestic economy remain almost fully 'expatized'. This MUST change. Some big areas that offer opportunity IMHO are:
1/ Construction.The construction industry has to up-skill and to employ Omani silled and semi-skilled labour. The trades – electricians, plumbers, carpenters, tilers – remain stubbornly filled by poorly skilled Indians, and our crap electrics, kitchens and toilets the result. Ditches are dug by hand by large groups of blue, green or orange suited Pakistanis, rather than with a machine operated by an Omani. The civil engineers are Turks, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Brits. Even the crane operators – a nice skilled job – are imported.
2/ Health CareNurses and medical technicians are predominantly Filipino and Indian. With the more skilled Doctors Oman is probably doing as well as it can, although the need for better quality training and truly independent certification remain issues. Hospital orderlies and cleaners should be 100% Omani, but again the ranks are filled with expats and older Omani who still know that a jobs a job (and have families needing support).
3/ TourismProgress is evident, but no-where near enough. The problem here is that while tourism is a labour intensive business, it’s low margin, and the quality and low cost of Filipino staff underpin the profitability in what is a highly competitive international industry. Omani staff are also generally unwilling to work the same hours either.
4/ TransportationCars are seen as an essential part of life in Oman. Fuel is cheap (around US$0.30 a litre), import taxes and car registration charges low, and so the number of cars per capita pretty high. Yet take a car for a service or for repair and it seems the entire car and truck business is fully expat. There are no Omani mechanics, or even service centre managers and administrators. Truck drivers were subject to an abortive move to require 100% Omanisation, but hit problems when deliveries slowed by orders of magnitude, and no Omanis could be found to operate the sewage trucks. Those driving jobs that have been Omanised (school buses, light commercial) are plagued with unprofessional driving standards and high accident and fatality rates.
5/ EducationStill unfortunately a growth industry, the Primary and secondary sector suffers from poor standards, basic curricula, plagiarism and cheating. Sultan Qaboos University, the no. 1 institution, has low rates of Intellectual property creation or industrially useful R&D. Omani staff are often over-promoted and inexperienced. Expat staff are dominated by time serving second raters. The newer private universities have huge problems with low quality students who they can’t really be failed. This means that a lot of money and talent is being totally wasted right now, with too few Omani getting a strong education based on high standards, knowledge and research. Instead we’re getting too many lazy idiots who can copy and paste, and seek to obtain by any means a worthless piece of paper they think will entitle them to a monthly payment for life.
6/ Media & CommunicationsThe mobile phone business has been very successful in finding good Omanis. Nawras has done a fantastic job here, (and even Omantel too in this regard): staff are mainly Omani. But the newspapers and radios again seem locked into a pervasive layer of middle management NRIs. What’s the % Omani writing the Times of Oman? Or The Week? Oman TV is a complete and utter joke. More deregulation of the industry could create lots of jobs for Omanis: in production, writing, acting, reporting, filming, and the huge areas of post-production and advertising.
7/ ConscriptionMany 1st world counties still have compulsory military service in between high school and Uni/work. We should have something similar here for men and women. Give them solid (and tough) basic training that includes some life skills. Make them get their hands dirty and sweat. Make sure they assist the community. Get them doing civil works (repairing falaj, drilling water wells, clearing land, building and repairing walls), helping in schools and hospitals, in civil defense, coastal and border patrol. Pay them next to nothing. And don’t let the wastafarians escape their duty either. When I say compulsory I mean it for everyone, not just the poor.
While the Government knows this wave of youth is upon us, more effectual regulation and policy is needed urgently. Many of the rules that are in theory designed to improve Omanisation instead act to discourage local SMEs with pointless red tape and arbitrary inflexible regulations. For example, by requiring all delivery vans to be driven by Omani, yet also insisting that they do not have to do anything else (like help carry the dishwasher into the house, etc) the Ministry simply doubled the costs of delivery for businesses and pissed off a lot of hard working Indians (who get to do the hard work while the driver sits in his AC’d cab with engine running, and they do the lifting).
Employment law makes it very hard (if not almost impossible) to fire an Omani, which means no-one wants to hire one if they could get an equivalent expat. The large monopolies and oligopolies (construction & car dealers being prime examples) seem to dominate industrial regulation. Omanis, already hobbled by a substandard education, find themselves trapped between a pool of unlimited low cost imported unskilled/semi-skilled labour and an entrenched layer of expat middle/upper Management and Omani businessmen. Growth is being held back, and we need that as well as more Omanisation.
The problem is not going to go away by itself. With future income from the big extractive industries flat or falling (esp. on a per capita basis) our window of opportunity is limited.
Massive unemployment is the No. 1 threat to this country and our current way of life. We must act more coherently and decisively in our defense.
This is 2050...
*Disclaimer: In this article I will be making sweeping generalizations, and the exceptions make the rule. I’m not talking necessarily about individuals. I swear that the smartest, most talented, hardest working people I work with are Omanis, and they are as good or better than the best international competition. I also see many outstanding new Omani graduates and entrepreneurs – bright, keen to work, and intellectually curious. Many expats are also working very hard in difficult conditions, some for almost no salary, and a lot would probably say that if there was an Omani who could actually do their job they would willingly go do something else.
