OmanDay Weekly News Roundup

Since the last week the Sultanate has witnessed a lot of happenings in the country. Here are the top headlines as part of our weekly news roundup:

The Royal Oman Police has announced that the citizens from about 25 countries  are eligible to get an unsponsored visa to Oman. The countries which were eligible included Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bhutan, Belarus, Costa Rica, Cuba, Georgia, Guatemala, Honduras, Iran, Kazakhstan,  Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Salvador, Uzbekistan,  Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, The Maldives and Vietnam.

Recently, the Chief Executive Officer of Oman Air, Paul Gregorowitsch who has been in the position since 2014 has resigned from his post. The Oman Air has confirmed the same with the announcement that the Executive Vice President of Products and Brand Development, the Engineer Abdulaziz Al Raisi will be the Acting CEO.

The Mwasalat has extended the bus services timings of operation with city routes Ruwi-Muttrah, Ruwi-Wadi Kabir, Ruwi-Amerat – Muscat and Mabela-Ruwi from 6AM till midnight from 20th October to improve the efficiency of service provided to its customers. From Ruwi, the last bus to Mabela  would depart at 12am, at 11.40pm to Muttrah, at 11.55pm to Wadi Kabir and at 11.40pm to Amerat. This move has been introduced to encourage citizens to use public transport during the longer course of the day.  The public had earlier given the feedback to extend the operation timings of buses.

As per certain experts, the rise in number of the Omani youth who are filling the job vacancies created by the departure of expat workers would revitalise the rental market of Oman. In addition to this, the Sultanate’s strict Omanisation policy coupled with 25,000 new job openings for the Omanis is expected to fill the vacancies.

Recently, the Ministry of Regional Municipalities had shut down an Omani store, which used to make halwa by melting plastic buckets. The people in the shop making halwa  used plastic buckets that melts to shift the halwa mix from a large bowl (industrial) to a smaller one (plastic) in video which was uploaded online which went viral.  The Omanis had condemned this conduct of the shop employees earlier.

Finally, a meeting of the Council of Ministers at Hisn Al Shumoukh in the Wilayat of Manah was presided by His Majesty(HM) Sultan Qaboos bin Said where HM reviewed the regional, local and international conditions.