Muscat: His Majesty the Sultan Haitham Bin Tarik presided over a meeting of the Council of Ministers at the Cabinet’s premises, on the 15th of June.

His Majesty commenced the meeting by offering gratitude to the Almighty Allah for the bounties bestowed upon the Sultanate and its noble denizens. He prayed for swift recovery and freedom from the virus and pandemic for all of humanity.

He kickstarted the agenda of the meeting by reviewing local and regional conditions. He stated that the issue of employment of Omani job seekers is the government’s highest priority. To achieve the goal and provide employment opportunities, His Majesty the Sultan laid emphasis on the integration of efforts of state departments, exhorting them to cooperate towards realizing concrete results and enabling youth to contribute to the march of development and nation-building.

His Majesty the Sultan then proceeded to bless the launch of the National Employment Programme (NEP), which is under the umbrella of Oman’s Vision 2040. The NEP targets the development of sustainable solutions for the issue of employment in all state sectors (civil, military and security), as well as private sector companies.

The NEP analyses jobseekers data on a regular basis till they join the labour market. It also seeks other options to fill the gap of knowledge and skills needed by the labour market so that the unemployed immediately get jobs when they are available.

With the context of His Majesty’s Royal attention to develop education, upgrade the quality of school education and adapt its outcomes to labour market needs in accordance with Oman Vision 2040, His Majesty the Sultan underlined the importance of accelerating procedures necessary for analysing the requirements of technical and vocational education for the post-basic education stage to fit labour market needs.