Deadline nears for status correction of non-Omani workers
Published: 09:12 AM,Dec 09,2025 | EDITED : 02:12 PM,Dec 09,2025
Muscat: The Ministry of Labour has issued a reminder that the grace period granted to employers and individuals to correct the status of non-Omani workers and benefit from exemptions from fines and financial obligations will end in December 2025. The Ministry stressed that no requests will be accepted after the deadline.
According to the Ministry, the grace period allows employers and workers to complete all required procedures to take advantage of the exemptions announced earlier.
These include the cancellation of all expired work-card fines that have exceeded seven years and waiving financial obligations owed to the Ministry of Labour for cases recorded in 2017 or earlier, including the cost of the worker’s repatriation ticket. The initiative also includes the cancellation of work cards that have been inactive for more than 10 years when no service requests have been made for the worker, while leaving the option to reactivate the card available in cases such as renewal, departure, transfer of services or reporting a worker’s absence.
The Ministry noted that the exemption also extends to financial obligations recorded against companies that failed to renew work cards or transfer worker services, as well as exemption from fines linked to work cards under specific conditions. These include renewing the work permit, paying the renewal fees for the upcoming period, cancelling a worker’s service, transferring services, or paying the worker’s repatriation ticket if the employer or the individual worker has not completed their departure.
The Ministry reiterated the importance of adhering to the specified grace period and warned that any request submitted after the end of December 2025 will not be considered.