Oman government developing program to guarantee residents’ salaries are paid on time

Construction workers on a site in Muscat, Oman (Shutterstock)

DUBAI: The Omani government is developing a new program that will track private firms that fail to pay workers the correct wage on time.
Once launched, such a scheme would ultimately secure residents’ salaries, national news outlet, Times of Oman reported citing the country's Ministry of Manpower.
The government is “working on developing” a system that will automatically alert the ministry when private firms fail to pay salaries on time.
“Workers will no longer need to report to the Ministry of Manpower when they do not receive their salaries,” the ministry said in an online statement, adding: “As the wage protection program will notify the ministry of any delay by businesses to pay wages.”
The statement added that the aim of the program was to guarantee that workers received their wages for the exact amount agreed and always on time.
“The program is not active yet, but the ministry is still working on developing it,” a ministry spokesman told Times of Oman.
The report did not go into details of what would happen to firms that did fail to pay employees on time, but similar schemes set up in neighboring countries such as the UAE have involved heavy fines and other penalties.