There were less than 500,000 Indian workers in Oman at the end of the September 2020, figures from the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) show.

According to the NCSI’s monthly statistical bulletin, there were 499,431 Indian workers in the country at the end of last month. This is a decrease of more than 20 per cent since September 2019.

Indian workers continued to make up more than half a million of the country’s population before September: their numbers stood at 542,091 in July, and dropped to 517,702 in August. Oman’s expat Indian labour population at the end of 2019 was 617,730.

The numbers of people from other expat communities have also fallen. The number of Bangladeshis in the country at the end of September 2020 stood at 550,471, reflecting a 13.9 per cent decline since the same time last year.

Similarly, there has been a 15.7 per cent drop in the country’s Pakistani expat population, which now numbers 176,550.

Filipino expat numbers fell by 8.2 per cent to reach 45,038, and a similar percentage drop was seen among Egyptians (8.4 per cent), whose numbers stood at 31,511 at the end of September 2020.

The biggest drop in terms of percentage was recorded among Ugandans. A 41.6 per cent between the months of September in 2019 and 2020 means there are now 14,099 workers from that country in Oman.

Overall, the number of expatriate workers in the country fell from 1,712,798 at the end of 2019, to 1,449,406 by the end of September 2020, reflecting a decline of 16.4 per cent.

SOURCE: TIMESOFOMAN