Fighting Modern-Day Slavery: The No Objection Certificate in Oman

Fighting Modern-Day Slavery: The No Objection Certificate in Oman Published on September 23, 2017

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Ali Mansouri Writer, Researcher, Consultant (The #CNNFreedom Project is still going on. People of different nationalities across the globe join together to fight for their freedom and the freedom of their fellow human beings against modern-day slavery in all its forms and shapes including forced labor. This is a global and noble fight. The following is a personal and a humble contribution to this fight in businesses and higher education institutions)

Background Slavery is illegal in Oman and so is the No Objection Certificate (NOC). This certificate is illegal in the strict sense of the term as it is not mentioned in the Oman Labor Law nor has it been enacted by any legislative body in the country nor has it been decreed by His Majesty, the Sultan of Oman. So from where have Abood Al-Sawafi (VC) and Hamad Al-Hajri (Assistant VC) of A’Sharqiyah University and other merciless employers brought it and have been using it as a “slavery and exploitation tool” against their employees with the approval of the Ministry of Manpower in Oman?! This NOC is the outcome of a special arrangement between some wealthy businessmen and employers of Oman and the Royal Oman Police(ROP). The arrangement has been made or condoned by the Ministry of Manpower to make it an official tool against expatriate teachers and employees on the labor market in Oman. Before we expand on this disgusting slavery tool which does not exist anywhere in the world, let us first give our readers a brief idea about it. This Certificate is a requirement imposed on the teachers and other employees who are obliged to get it from their former employers when they want to move to another job elsewhere inside Oman. It is claimed that the goal of such a certificate is to organize Page 2 of 13

and control the movement of the workforce for the benefits of the businesses, the economy and the country. This is the stated goal which has completely nothing to do with reality. In fact, this nonsense called (NOC) does not exist in any free or non-free market economy on the Planet! The real goal is not to control the labor movement or organize the economy but, in fact, to suppress the expatriate teachers and workers and treat them like slaves, which is completely illegal and against all international labor laws. It is also against the basic human rights as defined by the UN and its International Labor Organisation.

I would like to argue here that this NOC is futile and should be abolished on the basis of three reasons. First, it is illegal by both the Oman Labor Law and the International Labor Law. Second, it is very harmful to the Omani economy. Third, it is against the basic human rights of expatriate teachers and employees. Let us expand on each of these reasons.

Legal Argument As we have just said, the NOC has not been mentioned in the Oman Labor Law which organizes the relationships between the employees and the employers in the private sector and there are many dishonest employers who do not believe in the legality of the NOC. According to the Times of Oman January 18, 2017, the Minister of Manpower, Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser Al Bakri, addressing the Shura Council, agreed with the members that the two-year visa ban for expat workers should stay, in an effort to protect Omani businesses. He said: “If he {the employee} completes two years, he has the right to move to another employer as the contract between them is over. If he comes back {sic: goes back} to his country during his contract and violates the contract then he will not be allowed to come back until after two years,� Al Bakri said, during the Shura Council meeting. These are the words of the Minister Al Bakri, the Minister of Manpower in Oman as quoted by the Times of Oman (January 18, 2017).

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The paper added: “In answer to requests on keeping article 11 of the law (2-year-visa-ban) there were earlier requests to keep it and we are always with this opinion but there were opposed opinions.”

So far so good. But there are many ruthless employers like Abood Al-Sawafi (VC) and Hamad Al-Hajri (Assistant VC) of A’Sharqiyah University, who do not have work ethics nor do they have any respect for anything, including Oman Labor Law and the guidelines mentioned by the Minister of Manpower. They mistakenly think they are above the law! Their employees spend two years as required or even more but Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri deny them the NOC out of hate, wickedness, and revenge. They want to enslave their employees forever! The former Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program took Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri to court because they refused to give him the NOC as the “law’ and the guidelines from the Minister state. They did not offer any legal or satisfactory argument for their refusal in spite of the fact that the former Director had served A’Sharqiyah University for many years and saved the University from total collapse during the Academic Year 2011-2012. Let us say something about this. There was a legal agreement between A’Sharqiyah University and an Educational Company in Muscat according to which the Company would run the Foundation Program for the University for three years. The University canceled the agreement after two years only as it was unhappy with the performance of the Company. The Company was also unhappy for the cancellation and took the University to court. After a bitter legal battle lasted for almost two years, the Company won the court case and the University was fined more than one and a half million dollars for violating the agreement with the Company. The cancellation of the agreement was effective as from July 2012, that is, at the very end of the Academic Year 20112012. The University did not have then any Foundation Program nor did it have any teachers or books or anything to run the Program. The former Director did everything single-handedly: he designed the Foundation Program as per the Omani and international criteria and standards and recruited 52 teachers for the Program with very little help from one HR officer as there was no HR department at that time. Then he arranged for the purchase of excellent teaching materials: textbooks, workbooks, CDs, etc. for the Program from some reputed and highly respected international publishers. He ran the Program efficiently for four years. Then came Abood AlSawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri to conspire against him and terminate his work contract without Page 4 of 13

offering him any justification or explanation. He was also deprived of his end-of-service gratuity and had to take them to court to get it back. The former Director was brave enough to stand against their forgery of students’ marks and grades including the forgery of the grades of Salem Al-Sawafi, the son of Abood Al-Sawafi, the VC of the University, as we have already explained in another article. The point we would like to emphasize here is that the NOC is not to be taken for granted as per the “law” or the Ministry of Manpower guidelines but it depends on the employee being a slave to Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri. These two monsters do not care about performance or achievements or great services you do to the University; they care only about their personal opinions of you and whether you do what you are told blindly and whether you disagree with them about this point or that or whether you speak against their thievery and corruption or not.

They demonstrated their ruthless and wicked nature by telling the Court in Ibra that the “University of A’Sharqiyah is free to give the NOC to any employee as it wishes. Nobody has the right to force the University to give it to employees.” This means that Abood AlSawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri believe there is no “law” that compels them to give the NOC nor do they respect the law regarding the NOC. The Ministry of Manpower can easily verify this report by going to the memos submitted to the Courts in Ibra. So Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri are misusing the NOC against anyone who might have disagreed with them on this point or that during the course of his employment at the University.

Let us go to Article (11) of the Oman Labor Law mentioned above to justify the existence of the NOC. In fact, this article has nothing to do with the NOC at all! There must be something inaccurate in what the Minister of Manpower has said in the Shura Council or in the report of the Times of Oman above. Article (11) of the Oman labor Law is as follows:

Article (11): “The employer shall employ the Omani workers to the maximum possible extent. The ratio of Omanis to the foreigners in the various economic sectors or the activities covered by each sector

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as may be necessitated by the circumstances of each sector or activity and the extent of availability of the necessary Omani workers shall be determined by a decision of the Minister.

The employer shall ensure the equality of all workers when the nature and conditions of their work are similar.”

As can be seen very clearly from the contents of the article above, Article (11) has nothing to do with the NOC; it simply deals with Omanization—the process of replacing expatriate employees by Omani nationals. There is a huge difference between the two.

The nearest article we find in the Oman labor law is Article (56) which says the following: Article (56): “The employer shall be obliged to repatriate a non-Omani worker to his country upon termination of the work-relationship with him unless the sponsorship of such worker is transferred to another employer. If the employer declines to do so, the relevant directorate shall repatriate the worker at the expense of the Government and revert to the employer for recovery of the amount paid.”

This article in the Oman Labor Law does not talk about the NOC. It simply talks about the employer being obliged to provide the expatriate employee with a return ticket to his /her home country unless the sponsorship of the employee has been transferred to a new employer. This transfer of sponsorship should be automatic if the employee has honored the contract and served the employer the specific period mentioned in the contract which may be for one year only as a higher education institution, like A’Sharqiyah University, often gives one-year contracts to teachers and employees. It is illegal and illogical to ask an employee to stay for two years whereas his/her contract is for one year only. As for the return ticket, the employer may deliberately “torture” the employees and wants them to beg for the ticket! This is the normal practice of Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri who are infamous for telling shameful lies about the tickets and about everything else. They would play the game of asking you to come again and again for filling in silly and useless documents in all the departments of the University and then stand like a beggar at the doors of their offices for signing the documents! I, for one, Page 6 of 13

would not beg for a ticket or for the NOC or for anything else. To hell with them and their University!

In a series of very good reports about the NOC, the Times of Oman, a very respected English Daily in Oman, has used the following words: “rule” (June 22, 2017); “Residents are voting in a government unit poll asking whether Oman's hotly debated No Objection Certificate (NOC) rule should stay or go.” “ruling” (June 22, 2017) “With five days left to vote, a government unit's poll on scrapping or keeping the No Objection Certificate (NOC) has swung heavily to those who want to see the ruling removed.” “regulation” (June 21, 2017); “The labor lab, headed by Shahswar Al Balushi, had drawn up proposals around the NOC regulation to make it fairer to both employer and employee.”

(June 27, 2017): “Voting has closed on the week-long Arabic language poll that asked residents in Oman whether they agree, or disagree with removing the (NOC) regulation.”

The Times of Oman has never used the word “law” to describe the NOC, which clearly indicates that the paper agrees with us that the NOC is not a law after all. It is just a special arrangement between wealthy businesses and employers and the Oman Royal Police as we have already mentioned.

What does the International Labor Law say about the NOC? The NOC in Oman clearly falls within the definition of “forced labor” by the International Labor Organization (ILO). As per the ILO, “forced labor can be understood as work that is performed involuntarily and under the menace of any penalty. It refers to situations in which persons are coerced to work through the use of violence or intimidation, or by more subtle {subtler} means such as manipulated debt, retention of identity papers or threats of denunciation to immigration authorities.” This applies to the NOC exactly.

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According to the ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), forced or compulsory labor is: "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily." The Forced Labour Protocol (Article 1(3)) explicitly reaffirms this definition.

This definition consists of three elements: 1. Work or service refers to all types of work occurring in any activity, industry or sector including in the informal economy.

2. The menace of any penalty refers to a wide range of penalties used to compel someone to work.

3. Involuntariness: The terms “offered voluntarily� refer to the free and informed consent of a worker to take a job and his or her freedom to leave at any time. This is not the case for example when an employer or recruiter makes false promises so that a worker takes a job he or she would not otherwise have accepted.

The new legally-binding ILO Protocol on Forced Labour aims to strengthen global efforts towards combating forced labor, trafficking, and slavery-like practices. Governments now have the opportunity to ratify the Protocol and integrate new measures at the national and regional levels to combat this crime.

The Labour inspection Conventions No. 81 and 129 have not been ratified by the Government of Oman yet, but the government saves no efforts to comply with their contents in order to ensure a greater protection of fundamental principles and rights at work.

Economic Argument The stated goal of the NOC, as mentioned by the Ministry of Manpower, is that the NOC is designed to help businesses and protect and benefit the Omani economy. This goal is repeated blindly by many people like parrots, without the slightest idea of what they are talking about!

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But, in fact, this is completely untrue. On the contrary, the NOC is destroying companies and inflicting heavy damages on the Omani economy. The NOC leads to restrictive movement of teachers and other employees and greatly reduces the productivity of companies and institutions.

It creates barriers for businesses, especially small and medium companies, to attract experienced and talented workers from the local markets. If experienced and talented staff are not given the NOC, they will leave Oman and go to other countries. The Omani job market will thus lose them and other countries will benefit from their experience and talents. Companies and other organizations usually spend a lot of time and money in training their staff. This time and money will be wasted and the economy will lose a valuable workforce if the workers are forced to leave the country. So where are the benefits?! There is another fundamental point related to this argument. The NOC applies to expatriate workers only; the Omanis are exempted. If the Ministry of Manpower and employers really believe that the NOC is beneficial to businesses and the labor market, why don’t they expand it and make it cover the Omani workers as well, in order to increase the benefits to the economy? The Omani workers move freely from one job to another without any restrictions at all, but the expatriate workers are not free to move to another job though they are experienced and talented and have honored their work contracts! Is this fair or logical?

This is, in fact, the real problem. The NOC is being abused as a tool for slavery and exploitation by many ruthless and merciless employers like Abood Al-Sawafi (VC) and Hamad Al-Hajri (Assistant VC) of A’Sharqiyah University as we have explained. This is why the NOC should be canceled or modified. Everybody agrees that if the employee has honored the work contract, s/he should be allowed to automatically find another job and be granted the NOC. This is what the Minister of Manpower, Mr. Al Bakri, has said. This point of view is shared by Shahswar Al Balushi, head of the Tanfeedh lab and CEO of Oman Contractors Society who said the following in an interview with the Times of Oman: “If the expat came into the country to serve a specific purpose and before the two years expires he wants to jump ship; this is unfair for the company. If the company is the one asking this particular expatriate to leave, then I believe automatically the expat should be allowed to search for other opportunities and to join another company, without having to take an NOC,” the CEO said. (Times of Oman, January 18, 2017).

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This is a plausible point of view. The employee should be allowed to find another job or to get the NOC automatically if s/he has honored the contract of work with the current employer. But the Ministry of Manpower has not yet come up with any viable mechanism to solve this problem.

The problem then is not with the NOC but with its implementation as we have seen from the case of the former Director of the Language Center and Foundation Program with A’Sharqiyah University.

Humanitarian Argument Expatriate teachers and workers come to Oman in their thousands to work and stay on the job for a number of years. They are given one-year or two-year contracts; then they settle down alone or with their families. Some of them have children at school or college. They serve their employers for the full period of the contract and in most cases for many more years; usually like slaves and they blindly do whatever they are told. Then all of a sudden, their contracts are terminated or not renewed without any justification or explanation, which is one of the most disgusting and inhumane practices on any job market anywhere in the world. The employees are then denied the NOC in violation of the Ministry of Manpower guidelines and are threatened to be reported to the immigration authorities if they do not leave within a few days. They may be forced to enter into a very unfair bargain with the employers to be granted the NOC in return for giving up their end-of-service gratuity! This is an illegal bargain, but some employees may be compelled to unwillingly accept it as going back to their home country is a more bitter option. The ruthless and merciless employers, like Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamad Al-Hajri, do not care about their employees whether they have families or not, whether they have children at school or college or not. All these humanitarian aspects of working in another country are not taken into account by corrupt and merciless employers. The employees have to leave the country, sell their household furniture at a very low discount, and pay a heavy price for an arbitrary decision by a corrupt VC and Assistant VC who are completely out of touch with humanity. They are not fit to run a school or a university for human beings. The employees are then forced to go back to their home country or go to work in another country and, after two years, they may come back to Oman to start another saga and work again with another employer who may be more ruthless, cruel, and corrupt than the first one. What a nonsense! Most of the teachers and employees who are forced to leave Oman because of the NOC never come back. They have selfPage 10 of 13

dignity and they can easily find jobs elsewhere in the world since they are qualified and experienced, leaving the Oman job market searching desperately for new recruits who do not know about the NOC! But those who have left the country will always tell other people about it.

Nobody can stop them. This is why the Omani economy is suffering now from shortages of qualified and talented employees in both the public and private sectors, leaving many businesses unviable.

Ministry of Manpower Survey There has recently been an uproar by expatriate teachers and employees and by human rights organizations against this NOC in the GCC countries, including Oman. Most of these countries, except Oman, have abolished this certificate or have greatly eased the conditions for obtaining it.

It seems the Ministry of Manpower in Oman was a little embarrassed that Oman is the only country in the region and the world where this “slavery and exploitation tool” is still in use without any reform. In fact, it has been made stronger rather than weaker! To justify the existence of the NOC, the Ministry organized a “survey” to decide whether or not to keep the NOC. As reported by the Times of Oman (June 22, 2017), the polls show strong support for the NOC removal: “With five days left to vote, a government unit's poll on scrapping or keeping the No Objection Certificate (NOC) has swung heavily to those who want to see the ruling removed.”

The Arabic poll, as of 10 am on Thursday, received 910 votes, with 61 percent agreeing with 'removing NOCs', 33 percent disagreeing with 'removing NOCs', and six percent "not sure" votes. The English poll, as of 10 am on Thursday, received 609 votes, with 80 percent unsupportive of NOCs, 18 percent supportive of NOCs, and two percent "not sure" votes.”

It is very clear from these results that the majority of expatriate voters who voted in English (80%) are not in favor of keeping the NOC. Then voting closed on the week-long Arabic language poll that asked residents in Oman whether they agree, or disagree with removing the (NOC) regulation. “Results of the Arabic poll indicate that a majority of residents

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"disagree" with removing the (NOC) guideline, at 62 percent. Only 32 percent of voters "agree" with removing the regulation, while 6 percent were unsure.� (Times of Oman, June 27, 2017).

The Ministry of Manpower has decided to keep the NOC taking the results of the Arabic poll (62%) of the Omani nationals into account and ignoring the English poll (80%) of the expatriate voters! This is a very peculiar decision. Of course, 80% is a lot higher than 62% and the decision should be based on the higher percentage. In addition, many Oman nationals are not well-informed about the NOC and its damaging impact on the economy. Most of them are misled by believing that the NOC is an effective tool to control and regulate the economy. But, in fact, it is not.

Conclusion Having briefly discussed the NOC from different angles, we strongly recommend either the abolition of the NOC altogether or substantially revising it to take into account the nature of the new realities of Omani economy in the light of the declining prices of oil in the world. The new tool must be fairer for both the employers and expatriate employees. An effective mechanism needs to be worked out by the Ministry of Manpower for the successful implementation of the new tool. This is an urgent step to energize the economy and prevent any misuse of the NOC and help retain the qualified human resources in the system. A ruthless and selfish employer may use it as a “revenge weapon� against his/her employees for personal reasons and thus inflict heavy damages on the economy.

It is very difficult to fully comprehend the logic behind the NOC. We do not see any role for it in any modern economy. It is really no more than an outdated tool for slavery and exploitation belonging to the Middle Ages!

Few, if any, expatriate teachers and workers come back again to work in Oman after the two-year ban. They are not prepared to go through the same ordeal again and again.

Most, if not all, expatriate teachers and other employees do not know about the NOC before coming to Oman. I myself did not know about it until after coming; otherwise, I would not have come in the first place.

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Oman is a beautiful country and its people, in general, are very friendly, but it is not the only country in the world!

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