10,000 Oman Jobs Open to Bangladeshi Workers and What the New Labour Pact Sets Out

Oman plans to recruit 10,000 workers from Bangladesh, split evenly between agriculture and fisheries, under an agreement meant to widen labour cooperation between the two countries. If you are a Bangladeshi worker watching the Gulf, this is the first concrete number attached to a route that has been largely closed since October 2023. At Metaintro we read announcements like this against the rulebooks that sit behind them, because the rules decide what a job is worth once you land. So this guide covers three things. What is agreed, what the move costs you before departure, and what Oman's Labour Law promises you once you are there.

What Has Actually Been Agreed?

The scope is specific and the sectors are named. Oman has expressed interest in 5,000 agricultural workers and 5,000 fisheries workers, in the words of Bangladesh State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shama Obaed Islam, speaking at the foreign ministry in Dhaka.

Oman has expressed its interest in recruiting 5,000 farmers and 5,000 fishermen, a total of 10,000 people from Bangladesh, and an agreement has also been signed, in the words of the minister to Muscat Daily.

Read the wording carefully. Expressed interest and a signed agreement are not the same as an open recruitment drive, and none of the coverage describes one. The plan covers agricultural and fisheries workers in equal numbers, which points to two separate employer groups rather than a single project.

What Happens Next and When?

A visit, not a vacancy. Omani government representatives are expected in Bangladesh next month to discuss implementation and work out the details, and the talks will be held with the relevant ministry to finalise them.

Until that happens there is nothing to apply for. Wages, contract length, employer names, the recruitment agent arrangements and the visa category are all unsettled, and each one decides whether this becomes a good opportunity or an expensive one.

That caution matters because the wider door is still partly shut. Dhaka is trying to restore broader access for its workers to Oman, where visa restrictions for some categories remain in place.

Why Were Bangladeshi Workers Shut Out of Oman?

Oman closed the route itself. The suspension began on 31 October 2023 and was meant to stop human traffickers exploiting Omani visas, to ease an oversupply of foreign workers and to open more jobs to Omani citizens. The scale was large, with at least around one lakh Bangladeshis moving to Oman in the ten months before the freeze.

Partial reopening came later and leaned professional. Oman lifted restrictions on some ten categories, covering official and family visas, engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers, accountants, investors and certain tourists. Farm and fishing work sits on none of those lists, and the work visa ban was still described as in progress. That is why the status of the work visa is the single best sign of whether these places are real.

What Will the Move Cost You Before You Fly?

More than most workers expect, and the official part of the bill is small next to the rest.

The Migrant Resource Centre Bangladesh, run with the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, lists the government fixed rates a worker pays before departure. Its table, pegged to a June 2020 exchange rate, sets these items out.

• A passport at 3,500 taka for 48 pages and five years.
• Online registration with the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training at 200 taka, with pre-departure training at the same rate.
• Medical examinations at 5800- 6000 taka, which the employer pays if it asks for more than the basic checks.
• Wage Earners' Welfare Board membership at 3,500 taka, plus police clearance and an embarkation fee of 500 taka each.

The same table is clear about who pays for what. Visa, work permit, transport to the work site, insurance and government processing fees fall to the agency or the employer, and an agency is not authorised to pass those costs on to you.

The real bill is far larger. Bangladesh's statistics bureau ran its first Cost of Migration Survey in 2019, and the International Labour Organization's global study on recruitment fees sets out what it found.

The mean recruitment cost was 417,000 Bangladeshi taka for Bangladeshi migrant workers, while monthly earnings averaged only 25,693 taka.

Measured in time, recovering that cost took 17.6 months of earnings on average in 2019, and 19.1 months for men. Put simply, well over a year of work can go to paying off the journey before a worker starts saving. The gap between the few thousand taka of fixed fees and that average is the space where agents and brokers operate, and it is the part you can most influence by refusing to pay anyone before the process has published rules.

What Does Oman's Labour Law Guarantee You Once You Arrive?

A written set of rights that applies to every employer covered by the law, including the ones who will hire for these roles. The law was published in Official Gazette 1504 issued on 30 July 2023, and these are the provisions that matter most to a new arrival.

Your contract must be in writing and in Arabic, in two copies, one for each side. A version in another language is allowed if an approved Arabic copy is attached, so ask for one in Bengali alongside it. If there is no written contract, you can still prove your rights by any means.

Your passport stays yours. An employer may not keep the passport of the worker or his personal documents without your written consent.

Your hours are capped. The limit is 8 actual hours a day and 40 a week, with overtime paid at a premium of at least 25% for daytime hours and at least 50% at night. There is a catch for these sectors in particular, because the minister can exempt seasonal employment and named sectors from the hours rules. Anyone signing for harvest work should ask in writing which hours regime applies.

Your leave is protected. You are entitled to no less than (30) thirty days of paid annual leave after six months, and a non-Omani worker gets a return ticket home to take it. Sick leave runs up to 182 days a year, on full pay for the first 21 days and on a falling scale after that.

Your pay has to leave a paper trail. An employer has not met its duty until the wage is transferred to your account at an approved local bank or licensed financial institution, and the burden of proving payment falls on the employer.

Your exit is protected too. When the contract ends, the employer must return you home within a maximum period of 60 (sixty) days and pay a gratuity of not less than the basic wage for each year of service, calculated on your final basic wage. One warning applies to all of it. A claim under the law is forfeited after the lapse of a year from the date it fell due, so do not wait to raise unpaid wages.

Who Is Allowed to Charge You a Recruitment Fee?

On the Omani side, nobody. Recruiting foreign workers needs a ministry licence, and the same article adds a direct ban.

It is also prohibited to charge any amounts to the workers whose recruitment is permitted in return for employing him, under Article 31 of Oman's Labour Law.

On the Bangladeshi side the picture is less tidy, because a recruitment or placement fee is on the list of costs borne by you as prospective migrant. The difference between that capped fee and the hundreds of thousands of taka many workers end up paying is where the damage happens. Fraud, over recruitment, commission for visas and syndicate control have crippled the system, in the view of experts and industry insiders, and a round public target is exactly the kind of number that draws people selling access before any rules exist.

What Makes Farm and Fisheries Work Different?

These are lower profile sectors than construction or domestic work, and that changes both the opportunity and the risk.

The demand is concrete. The split is 5,000 agricultural workers and 5,000 fisheries workers, an unusually even division that suggests two distinct groups of employers, each with its own seasons and its own contracts.

Oversight is thinner. Work on farms and boats is spread out, often remote, and harder for a labour attaché or an inspector to reach than a factory or a building site. That puts more weight on the paperwork you carry. A signed contract in a language you read, a bank account for your wages and a copy of the hours regime that applies to you are the three documents that let you enforce the rights in Oman's Labour Law when nobody is watching.

The law also gives you a reason to leave badly run jobs early. During a notice period, an employer must allow you 10 (ten) paid hours per week away from work to search for a new job, which is worth knowing before you ever need it.

How Bad Is the Wider Squeeze on Bangladeshi Workers?

Oman is one closed door among several. The United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Oman and Bahrain have all shut or heavily restricted entry for Bangladeshi workers, with no clear timeline for reopening. The UAE has been largely closed since 2013, and departures there fell from 98,000 in 2023 to 47,000 last year. The worry is that Bangladesh loses ground to the Philippines and Nepal, which compete partly on certified skills and orderly recruitment.

What This Means for South Asian Job Seekers, and How Do You Protect Yourself?

Our take is that this pact is worth preparing for and not worth paying for yet. The useful work right now is paperwork and planning, not payments. The deal is real, but the terms that decide your earnings do not exist until the Omani delegation has met the relevant ministry. Here is what to do in the meantime.

• Hold your money. Anyone collecting fees now for one of these places is selling a spot in a process with no published rules, and no receipt from a broker will count for anything once the official list is drawn up.
• Budget honestly. Add up the fixed government items from the Migrant Resource Centre table and treat anything far above them as a warning, not a normal cost.
• Read the contract against the law. Check the wage, the hours regime, the leave and the gratuity against Oman's Labour Law before you sign, and keep a copy you can read.
• Match yourself to the sectors named. The work is farming and fisheries, which is physical, seasonal and often remote, so demonstrable experience will count.
• Watch the work visa. Until the ban on work visas lifts, a move the embassy note on ProthomAlo described as in progress, the headline figure stays a plan.

Register through official channels too. The Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare and Overseas Employment and its welfare board run the formal route, and a worker who registers, trains and pays the welfare fee properly has a record to fall back on if something goes wrong abroad.

Keep more than one market in view as well. With four Gulf and Asian markets restricted at once, a documented skill and a clean paper trail protect you better than being early in any single queue.

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People Also Asked

Q: Can Bangladeshi workers apply for these Oman jobs now?

A: Not yet. Omani representatives are due in Bangladesh next month to settle the details, and visa restrictions for some categories remain in place.

Q: How much does it cost a Bangladeshi worker to migrate?

A: The fixed government items are modest, for example 200 taka for online registration. The average total is far higher, with a mean recruitment cost of 417,000 Bangladeshi taka in the national survey.

Q: What rights do foreign workers have under Oman's Labour Law?

A: A written contract, a ban on employers keeping your passport without consent, paid annual leave of no less than (30) thirty days, wages paid into a bank account and a gratuity at the end of service.

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