I always see in the daily newspapers (al watan or Oman) announcements of missing workforce mainly from India, Bangladish, etc. What do you think the main reasons of this phenomena?

Many people spend a lot of effort and pay a lot of money to get a labour either as a farmer or to perform any other job, finally when the employee arrives he will stay for few months, collect some money and then runs away from his sponser. He will end up becoming either a criminal or work on his own without approved sponser. Who do you blame the sponser or the employee and what do you think the government officials or the concerned ministry should do in order to stop/minimize this problem?

I think the main reason is that the peer influance .. he would meet a friend who would tell him its much profitable to wash cars for 500 baiza each than receive a 50 rials by his sponser ..

I have no idea what could be done .. maybe raise thier salaries so they wouldnt run away!

I think the main reason is that the peer influance .. he would meet a friend who would tell him its much profitable to wash cars for 500 baiza each than receive a 50 rials by his sponser ..

I think that could be a vaild reason, and it's true that whenever you go to a shopping mall you will find many of them waiting or helping you to find a park then they will ask if you need to clean your car. I wonder why ROP doesn't stop such business as it's encouraging them to run away from their sponsers.


I have no idea what could be done .. maybe raise thier salaries so they wouldnt run away!

The problem is they agree to work with such salary in the first place but later when they arrived in the country they run away, it's like cheating! And I believe 50 rials is a good salary compared to the life requirements in their countries.

Maybe, maybe, but don't take my words as gold cause am not a sage, well if in some cases some sponsors treated these people as human beings and not as rabbits, well maybe this could be avoided.
I mean, is true that if you help an indian or a bangladeshi to get the labour card and the visa, you've done a great job, but 600 ryals, this seems to me a lil bit much.
I mean, i understand that a man can have sexual desires 24/7, but is not nice you keep her labour card if she doesn't do other jobs for you, apart cleaning.
And when you're a taxi man, i think you can wait til when you're home to make love with your wife. No need to wait for a foreign female worker who's dead tired and needs to go home, to take your disdasha off and start doing things.
But am not a sage, am only a mad woman...

amo no need to be mad ...

What are the 600 rials you are talking about for?

And do you think all people are treating their employees in an bad ways?

If you read the newspaper you will see like 6 to 8 people ran away!

I dont think its about treatment .. its mostly about earning a higher salary

I wrote in some cases if am not mistaken, and i can proudly say that my sponsor is more a friend than a sponsor.
The amount i was talking about is the sum that a sri Lankan guy had to give to an omani, including the card and the job done, to cut it short he paid the wasta.
Yes i see every day all these people pictures, and while reading about this 19 August as term given by ROP to everybody to leave the country if they don't have a valid visa, i realised that the problem is not a small one.

Yes the problem is not small and just imagin that these people when they ran away they leave their 'passports' which clould be fake ones with the sponsers.

And as AP said it's not about the treatment but it's about getting extra money they break the rules and create problems.

Is very difficult to go away leaving your passport, same as is very difficult to present a fake passport.
Am not a ROP lover, but i can say that they are one of the best police corps i met.
I don't like generalisations: it can be surely due to desire of money, but not cause they wanna be rich, simply cause all the profits they save are for their families.
Can be also for the treatment: the cases i presented, with obvious change of details due to security reasons, are not representative of the whole expats situations, but are a reality.
Waiting for other members to comment :)

Do you believe that the sponser will give the worker his passport? I don't think so espacially looking at current situation. I'm sure that every sponser is keeping the passport with him in a safe place.

We do have this problem also ,,, which is ( in my opinion ) very dangerous and causing alot of side problems in the society

I think the main reason behind this will be the extra money that these people looking for ( even that in the first place they accpet the job with the less income ) ,, more over the relation that they build it with other workers from the same nationality who try to confuse them to look for other jobs with high income

I dont think that the treatment is the reason for that ( where it is sometime in some cases )

What the hell does "confense" mean?

Doesn't every fulltime employee out there looking for higher paying and better jobs, even though they've accepted to work at relatively lower paying jobs?

But yeah Amo, harassment could be one reason amongst others. Dunno about the "confensed within same nationality theory" ...

they come here to earn bread for their families, and they will do whatever they can to provide that to his/her family back home!

if i was in their place, maybe i would have done the same thing if i needed money for the survival of my family!

those r called desperate measures!

What the hell does "confense" mean?

I meant confuse them ,, sorry for the spelling mistake :)

Doesn't every fulltime employee out there looking for higher paying and better jobs, even though they've accepted to work at relatively lower paying jobs?

they have all the right to look for a higer income job ,, but does that mean to run from your current job and start making problems around ,, they simply can quit the job and look in legal for other jobs

" same nationality theory" ...

I meant other workers who have the same nationality as a certain labour have

What else do you expect them to do when their sponsor doesn't give them their salaries on time, doesn't let them visit their families back home once in a while, harasses them in many different ways?

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing this should/would become a humanitarian issue in Oman pretty soon.

And yeah, do look at the situation from another perspective as well ... no labor workers quit their jobs at such an expense causing their sponsor/other-parties a lot of problems, in any other country! Well maybe another middle eastern country, but not elsewhere ... the root cause very well might be with the "countrymen" itself and not entirely to be blamed on these workers.

Sometimes I do quote my self and say: MAN its because the HEAT they are running away...like phewwww 48 49 c....who can work here !!!

but seriously many of them run away to work free...free business!

If I had to pay over 300 rials a year and earned a measly 150 RO a month, then I would definatley run away from my sponsor. They literally work their butts off & not only do they get treated like slaves, they're paid monkey nuts for their hard work.

What else do you expect them to do when their sponsor doesn't give them their salaries on time, doesn't let them visit their families back home once in a while, harasses them in many different ways?




What makes you sure that such attitudes are practiced by their sponsers?And I'm sure that there are rules with regard to work schedule so they visit their families according to the set duration.

Shinoda, I understand everyone looks for a better pay and its thier right .. the only difference is that some people do it in a legal way other do it illegally ..
we can also argue that drug trafficers are looking for a better pay too right?

no labor workers quit their jobs at such an expense causing their sponsor/other-parties a lot of problems, in any other country! Well maybe another middle eastern country, but not elsewhere ... the root cause very well might be with the "countrymen" itself and not entirely to be blamed on these workers.

if I am not mistaken the US face the same problem too!

Once you've signed a contract you have to honour it and be responsible enough to act according to the terms you agreed to. If a labourer is being treated properly by the sponsor, then they have no right to run away.

However, if the sponsor isn't sticking to the terms of agreement and there is nothing that the labourer can do, it isn't fair for them to suffer, so I guess running away might be the only solution. Ofcourse this is only after the labourer has complained officially to the government and nothing was done.

Personally, I don't think that the government would actually do anything to help the poor labourer. In this country, the Omani is always 'right'.

Arby, if you're talking about labor concerns, its a problem in almost all parts of the world. US faces problems over illegal work permits being issued, but not on humanitarian grounds. Oman has issues over humanitarian grounds.

Sadly, the last line that Phoenix posted is very, controversially correct. Being somehow involved with Indian associations in Oman (Salalah, to be specific), I've heard and come across numerous cases where the Indian embassy had to budge in to JUST get a person's contract ended so they could forget the miserable life they had at Oman, and return home. I could go on and on about real life stories I'm sure of, but thats if anyone's interested. The fact still remains that, for cheap labor, you can easily get people from 3rd world countries eager to try their luck for a good future ... but, making use of them instead and destroying their dream isn't such a good closure to the deal.

If I had to pay over 300 rials a year and earned a measly 150 RO a month, then I would definatley run away from my sponsor. They literally work their butts off & not only do they get treated like slaves, they're paid monkey nuts for their hard work.


150 rials? Most domestic workers dont ever get half of that much...

Yeah, some housemaids get paid as little as 50 rials a month!!!

US faces problems over illegal work permits being issued, but not on humanitarian grounds. Oman has issues over humanitarian grounds.

I disagree on this .. in humane treatment is everywhere .. its like saying Omanis are the only bad people in the world ..

I didnt say there are "0" people treating others inhumanily .. I said, major reason of running away labour are looking for better ways to get paid ..

lol and not earning bare minimum living wages is not a humanitarian need?

RO 50/month = RO 12.5/week = ~ 300 Bzs/hour (on a 40 hour, full time schedule).

Most domestic workers work more than 40 hours anyways. With that kind of money, forget if they even get time to visit their families back home! I guess thats why there are rules on minimum wage in US?

And Arby, you can disagree on whatever you please, but I haven't heard of more than a handful humanitarian-labor-cases in US that haven't ended up as multi-million-$$ legal suits anyways. =)

Edit: I never generalized on Oman anyways. Just mentioned Oman because thats the main country under discussion. People should stop taking generalization as an excuse reply and accuse the other person of calling their country/religion the worst, if they have nothing else to add. :duh:

However, if the sponsor isn't sticking to the terms of agreement and there is nothing that the labourer can do, it isn't fair for them to suffer, so I guess running away might be the only solution. Ofcourse this is only after the labourer has complained officially to the government and nothing was done.


If he is not happy then he can ask his sponser to send him back home. Simple!

lol and not earning bare minimum living wages is not a humanitarian need?

RO 50/month = RO 12.5/week = ~ 300 Bzs/hour (on a 40 hour, full time schedule).



If he is not happy with that salary then why he agrees in the contract.

And how much 50 RO in Indian currency anyway?

as Icy said ,, If they are not happy with the salary ,, why did they accept it in the first place ??? ,, they can ask to be return back without needing to run away and cause problems around ,,,

LOL, think a bit before you ask questions like that.

When domestic workers are brought in bulk numbers from countries like India, Bangladesh, Philipines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and so on, they are all loaded into one bus, then into one plane after they have paid a lot of money to get their passports, visa papers and other formalities cleared. They do all this in the first place because of financial difficulties that have probably crippled their families. At that stage of time, all they are told are "We have jobs abroad in the gulf for you. You'll get enough money to send back home to feed your family ... even otherwise, its abroad!"

You think like white collar jobs they are made to sit down, understand their contract and then ink it?

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RO 50/month = ~ INR 5000. Don't know why you asked, because they're not living in India while they earn, but in Oman.

And why should we blame the sponsers if they are loaded into a bus like that without proper contract? The authorities in their home counries should be responsible for this, if it's really true. But even though these workers should at least know from other people how much they are expected to get paid.

Anyway not all are paid 50 RO a month, I know a contractor giving each of them 5 rials per day, that means 150 RO a month and they are building houses.

They are not living in India right, but they are not spending all their money in Oman also. Tell me, how do you rate a person who gets 5000 INR in India?

RO 50/month = RO 12.5/week = ~ 300 Bzs/hour (on a 40 hour, full time schedule).

Most domestic workers work more than 40 hours anyways. With that kind of money, forget if they even get time to visit their families back home! I guess thats why there are rules on minimum wage in US?

and this include a warm home & good food. If the guld started raising the minimum wages, beleive me, the number of forign workers would decrease there .. its fine for me, but would it be fine for those people to lose a window where they could get thier income.

P.S I didnt use the word generalisation here!!

Arby, most sponsor families that provide from a warm meal and a place to stay won't mistreat their worker. I'm talking about horrible cases of harassment uncluding un-consented sex, molestations, working horrendous housrs and so on.

You may or may not chose to believe the truth in these cases, but as I said "seeing is believing" to most anyways. =)

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If you were to blame the authorities back at these countries for what these individuals chose to do, then you might be much better off blaming the Omani authority for their way of handling such cases. Because if its a problem and it very well is, not forgetting the humanitarian issue as well, then the Omani authorities that handle that task do a very sucky job because they keep letting it happen without either finding the root cause or without having an idea as to how to curb it.

But, I'm guessing this will stay as it is because a country has to run no matter how lazy and egoistic a few of its citizens are to working certain jobs and to realize that a few Gulf countries might not even have a long shot at being wealthy enough to provide a feeding hand to its people in the next 5-6 decades, at the most. (Read "depleting natural resources" and "no other valuable industry to drive the economy". Oh, I don't think tourism will hit high either ... ).