Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has announced four new partnerships for the creation of more than 1,500 job and training opportunities for Omanis in a variety of sectors.

The company will be collaborating with the National Centre for Employment (NCE), the Ministry of Manpower, Oman Logistics Centre and Daleel Petroleum and Baker Hughes on this effort.

The signees will support the creation of training opportunities and full-time jobs for the trainees in a variety of sectors including logistics, engineering and a range of other technical trades.

The Memorandums of Collaboration (MOCs) detailing these initiatives were signed at a ceremony held under the auspices of HE Sultan bin Salim Al Habsi, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Oman Central Bank and Chairman of the NCE Board.

PDO’s collaboration with the NCE aims to explore opportunities for a strategic and operational partnership in order to sustain the job creation drive. This will include the development of a strategy to meet labour demand requirements in various sectors.

HE Sultan Al Habsi, who signed on behalf of NCE, said, The Memorandum of Collaboration signed aims at benefiting from the experience of PDO to provide support to the National Centre of Employment to develop and implement plans to systematically enable Omanis in good and relevant jobs through up-skilling and training programmes, in addition to preparing them to benefit from diversification projects”.

PDO Managing Director Raoul Restucci, who signed the MoUs with the organisations, said: “We are delighted to build on the success of the National Objectives programme by collaborating with even more partners in the national priority that is job creation.

“There is strong focus on quality training and upskilling jobseekers as we are committed to supporting the Sultanate’s economy and diversifying our support beyond our boundaries to other economic sectors.”

A number of government dignitaries attended the ceremony held at the PDO’s Knowledge World venue in Muscat, including HE Dr Muna Al Jardani, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Manpower for Technical Education and Vocational Training, and HE Eng. Salim Al Nuaimi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Transport.

PDO has created more than 21,000 job opportunities for Omanis this year including redeployment from expired contracts. Its National Objectives programme targets continue to rise and the Company has already created more than 76,000 job, training, transfer, and redeployment opportunities for Omanis in both the oil and non-oil sectors, such as hospitality, real estate, fashion, tourism and aviation, since its launch in 2011.