To hire a non-Omani you need two things in sequence: a work licence from the Ministry of Labour, and then an employment visa and residence card from the Royal Oman Police. The Ministry side is priced per worker per category; the police side is a flat OMR 20 visa and a 30-day clock that starts the day the worker lands.
First, the date every other guide has wrong
Ministerial Decision 602/2025, the Regulation Governing the Work Licence and the Work-Practice Licence, was issued on 22 October 2025 and published in Official Gazette 1619 on 26 October 2025. Its own Article 3 said it would come into force three months after publication. It did not. Ministerial Decision 44/2026, issued on 25 January 2026 and published in Official Gazette 1632, replaced Article 3 so that MD 602/2025 takes effect from 15 February 2026. MD 602/2025 also repeals Ministerial Decision 340/2016, the old fees regulation, at Article 2 — so the schedule below is the operative one, but only from 15 February 2026, not from late January and certainly not from October 2025.
Every professional note published on this regulation between late October and December 2025 — DLA Piper, Oman Observer, The Arabian Stories and the alerts that copied them — predates MD 44/2026 and therefore states a commencement date that never happened.
If a page tells you the new fees applied from October 2025 or from January 2026, it has not been updated since the postponement. Ask which decision it is relying on.
Who issues what
Readers are routinely told the wrong body. The split is clean:
- Ministry of Labour — the work licence (the thing people call labour clearance or manpower approval), the occupational category, the profession on the licence, transfers, and all the fees in MD 602/2025.
- Royal Oman Police — the employment visa itself, entry, the residence permit and the resident card.
- Ministry of Health — attestation of the medical fitness certificate for the nationalities that need one.
- Sector regulators — occupational approvals for teaching, religious, media and medical roles, required before the visa is issued.
The sequence, end to end
- Confirm the profession is not closed to non-Omanis, and that you meet the Omanisation position for your activity.
- Apply for the work licence through the Ministry of Labour e-services portal or a Sanad office. The Ministry's own service page gives one to two weeks for establishments and one to ten days for individual employers.
- Pay the fee. Under Article 9 fees fall due after the Ministry approves the application, not on submission.
- Apply to the Royal Oman Police for the employment visa against the issued work licence.
- Arrange the medical fitness certificate abroad, if the worker's nationality requires one, and have it attested by the Ministry of Health.
- The worker enters Oman. From the date of entry you have 30 days to obtain the resident card.
- Register the worker's data with the Ministry. Late registration is priced from the arrival date, not from any grace period.
The work licence runs for 24 months and is not renewable; the work-practice licence runs for up to 24 months and is renewable. Press coverage of the reform describes this as an extension from 15 months, aligning the labour permit with the two-year residence period.
What the work licence costs
Every licence fee in MD 602/2025 is built the same way: an issuance fee of OMR 1 plus a registration fee. Annex 1 covers corporate employers, Annex 2 covers individuals. The Ministry of Labour publishes the same figures on its own service pages, which is unusually good corroboration for an Omani fee schedule.
| Licence | Registration fee | Total payable |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate — Category 1 | OMR 300 | OMR 301 |
| Corporate — Category 2 | OMR 250 | OMR 251 |
| Corporate — Category 3 | OMR 200 | OMR 201 |
| Corporate — investor category | OMR 300 | OMR 301 |
| Individual — domestic worker, 1 to 3 workers | OMR 100 | OMR 101 |
| Individual — domestic worker, 4 or more | OMR 140 | OMR 141 |
| Individual — agricultural, 1 to 3 workers | OMR 140 | OMR 141 |
| Individual — agricultural, 4 or more | OMR 240 | OMR 241 |
| Individual — sailor or vessel mechanic | OMR 200 | OMR 201 |
Press coverage of the reform adds that clubs, civil society institutions, mosques and churches now pay OMR 101, reduced from OMR 141, and that an employer can upgrade a worker's occupational category by paying only the difference in fee rather than buying a fresh licence. Neither point appears verbatim in the annex text we could retrieve, so treat both as reported by Oman Observer and Fana News rather than as text we have read.
Temporary licences — Annex 4
| Duration | Category 1 | Category 2 | Category 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 months | OMR 51 | OMR 43 | OMR 35 |
| 6 months | OMR 76 | OMR 64 | OMR 52 |
| 9 months | OMR 116 | OMR 96 | OMR 76 |
| 12 months | OMR 151 | OMR 126 | OMR 101 |
A figure in circulation describes a temporary recruitment licence of six months for up to five workers at OMR 36. It is real, but it is not an employer's licence and it is not part of MD 602/2025.
It sits under Ministerial Decision 1/2011, the regulation on the activity of recruiting non-Omani manpower, and it is granted to a licensed recruitment office to bring in domestic workers in the office's own name. The licence runs six months, is non-renewable, covers a maximum of five workers, and carries a non-refundable fee of OMR 36 per application.
The Ministry's FAQ adds a detail worth knowing if you are quoted this fee: the recruitment office may not pass the OMR 36 on to the employer. Your own temporary route is the Annex 4 table above.
Service fees — Annex 3
| Service | Fee |
|---|---|
| Amending the profession on a licence | OMR 5 |
| Amending wage data | OMR 1 |
| Transferring a worker's services to another employer | OMR 5 |
| Registering or amending an employment contract | OMR 1 |
Article 8: the 30% discount and the doubling
Article 8 is the provision that makes Omanisation a direct line item rather than a compliance abstraction. Fees are reduced by 30% where the employer meets the prescribed Omanisation rates, and doubled where it does not.
The text of Article 8 reduces or doubles the fees in Annex 1 and Annex 4 only — corporate work licences and temporary licences.
It does not, on its face, touch Annex 2 (individual and household employers) or Annex 3 (service fees such as the OMR 5 transfer). If you are a household employing a domestic worker, the multiplier is not yours to worry about; if you are a company, it applies to the main licence and to temporary hires but not to the OMR 5 you pay to move somebody in or out.
Any summary that says "all work permit fees are cut by 30%" has read a press release rather than the annexes.
The employment visa at the Royal Oman Police
With the work licence issued, the visa side is comparatively simple and comparatively cheap. The Royal Oman Police work visa is OMR 20, multi-entry, and valid for a stay of two years from the date it is stamped in the passport. Late renewal attracts a fine of OMR 50 per month.
- The applicant must be at least 21; the Arabic version of the ROP page also sets an upper limit of 60.
- The gender and the occupation must match the labour permit exactly. A mismatch is one of the most common causes of rejection and it is entirely avoidable at the licence stage.
- Passport valid for at least six months, plus two 6x4 cm photographs.
- Occupational approvals from the relevant authority for teaching, religious, media and medical roles.
There is a separate temporary work visa, also OMR 20, valid for the period specified in the permit — 4, 6 or 9 months. Unless the employer is a government body, it requires a labour permit to bring in workers for a limited period, which is where the Annex 4 fee table applies.
The medical fitness certificate
The Royal Oman Police publishes a closed list of nationalities that must produce a medical certificate, attested by the Ministry of Health, before the work visa is issued. It is the same list on the work visa and temporary work visa pages, in both English and Arabic: India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria and Nepal — eleven countries.
If the worker fails the medical, you are not simply out of pocket. Article 13 of MD 602/2025 lists failure of the medical examination as the first ground for recovering the licence fee, or for being issued a replacement licence for OMR 1. See the refunds section below.
Agent sites will tell you the examination must be booked through GAMCA or Wafid. Neither rop.gov.om nor any Omani government page we could find names those channels as compulsory for Oman, and the Wafid site itself does not publish an Oman country list. Treat "GAMCA is mandatory for Oman" as unverified.
Separately: any page that mentions MOHRE, Tas-heel, Qiwa, Absher, Musaned, ICP or GDRFA while purporting to describe Oman is describing the UAE or Saudi Arabia. This topic attracts more of that than any other in Omani business content. Discard the page rather than trying to translate it across.
After arrival: the resident card and the 30-day clock
The Royal Oman Police states it plainly: every expatriate resident in Oman must obtain a residence card within 30 days from the date of entry. The documents listed include the original and copies of the manpower form after the medical examination, which is why the medical is sequenced before, not after, the card.
rop.gov.om still lists OMR 6 for one year, OMR 11 for two years, and OMR 10 for each month of delay.
ROP Decision 78/2025, published in Official Gazette 1608, extended the expatriate card to a maximum of three years at OMR 5, OMR 10 and OMR 15 for one, two and three years. ROP Decision 157/2025, published in Official Gazette 1621 and in force from 10 November 2025, then superseded that: the card now runs for up to ten years at OMR 5 per year, with a replacement card at OMR 20.
So the live government page is behind by two amendments. Where a government page and a gazetted decision disagree, the decision wins — but budget for being quoted the page's figure at a counter.
We have not repeated the renewal mechanics here; our residency routes guide covers where the card sits among Oman's residence categories.
Penalties: two separate caps, not one
This is the part of MD 602/2025 that will actually cost employers money, and it is the part least well covered elsewhere. There are two distinct monthly penalties, each with its own OMR 500 ceiling.
- Article 10 — OMR 10 per month for delay in renewing the work licence or in registering the worker's data, calculated from the worker's date of arrival, capped at OMR 500 per worker.
- Article 11 — a monthly fine for failing to regularise a worker's status: OMR 15 for a natural person and OMR 20 for a corporate employer, capped at OMR 500 per worker.
Because the caps sit on separate articles, the maximum exposure on a single worker is not OMR 500. An employer that is both late renewing and late regularising can accumulate against both ceilings. Waivers exist for the death of the employer, illness of the worker requiring more than 30 days of treatment, a passport retained by a government body, bankruptcy or liquidation, and imprisonment of the worker.
Refunds and household exemptions
Article 13 allows the fee to be refunded, or a replacement licence to be issued for OMR 1, in a closed list of situations:
- The worker fails the medical examination.
- The Royal Oman Police refuses the visa.
- The worker dies within 90 days of arrival.
- The worker is repatriated within the same period.
- The worker's services are transferred to another employer.
- The employer dies.
- The Ministry cancels the licence through its own error.
Article 15 exempts certain households from the licence fee altogether when recruiting a domestic worker, carer, nurse, driver or home health assistant: persons with disabilities, elderly persons unable to care for themselves, beneficiaries of the household income support scheme, and persons needing specialised medical care. The exemption is reported as covering one worker per household.
Professions closed to non-Omanis
Ministerial Decision 235/2022, issued 14 July 2022 and published in Official Gazette 1450, prohibits non-Omani manpower from practising the professions in its annex. Article 2 lets licences already issued run to expiry; Article 3 repealed fourteen earlier decisions. Ministerial Decision 501/2024, issued 1 September 2024 and published in Official Gazette 1560, added roughly forty entries, taking the annex to serial number 249.
The detail almost everyone misses is that MD 501/2024 does not commence all at once:
- Most added items — the day after publication, so from 2 September 2024.
- Annex items 240 to 244 — from 1 January 2025.
- Annex items 245 to 247 — from 1 January 2026.
- Annex items 248 and 249 — from 1 January 2027.
Additions include refrigerated transport and water tanker drivers, hotel front-office manager, lifeguard, tourism and travel agent, housekeeping supervisor, quality control manager and officer, drilling fluid engineer, drilling supervisor, electrical and mechanical technicians, survey engineer, quality and aircraft inspectors, commercial promoters and brokers, goods stacker, crane operators, vehicle and spare parts salesmen, network specialists, marine traffic controllers, computer technicians, programmers and web designers.
We are deliberately not giving a headline total for the 2022 list. Al Roya reported 207 professions at the time; the annex as reproduced on qanoon.om runs to 210. Two credible sources, two numbers, one week apart — so the honest figure is the one that matters operationally, which is that the annex now ends at serial 249 and you check your specific job title against it rather than counting.
One further gate, flagged as secondary because we found it only in professional commentary: from 4 September 2025 certain roles in energy and minerals, logistics, and accounting, finance and audit — crane operators, welders, technicians among them — reportedly require a professional practice licence or classification certificate before a work permit can be issued or renewed, with a grace period to 1 June 2026 for energy and minerals. Fragomen, which reported it, also notes that the process for obtaining the certificate was not yet clearly set out.
What no official source publishes
These gaps are findings, not omissions on our part. Each one is a place where a confident number in a consultancy article should make you suspicious.
- No published definition of Category 1, 2 and 3. The Ministry publishes the three fee tiers but not the occupational mapping behind them. Anyone who tells you which category your job title falls into is guessing or has been told by a counter.
- No decision-level service timetable. The only official timings are the Ministry's own service pages: one to two weeks for establishments, one to ten days for individuals. Nothing in MD 602/2025 sets a deadline for the Ministry.
- No official deadline for registering the worker's data after arrival. Article 10 prices the delay from the arrival date but does not state how many days you have. The widely repeated "30 days to complete formalities after arrival" has no Omani source we could find; the only official 30-day figure is the ROP resident card deadline.
- No published biometrics deadline. ROP Decision 149/2024 issued the executive regulation of the biometrics law, but the resident card page does not mention fingerprints and we could not retrieve a deadline. Do not plan around one.
- No consolidated Omanisation rate table. Article 8 turns on "the prescribed Omanisation rates", and there is no single published schedule of those rates by sector. See our Omanisation guide for how far that can be reconstructed.
One last stale-page warning. The ROP work visa page still asks for a release letter from the previous employer approved by the Ministry of Manpower as a condition of transferring sponsorship. That requirement was removed in substance by the 2021 reform. It survives on the page, and in a narrower form it survives at the counter — which is the subject of our changing employer guide.
When did Ministerial Decision 602/2025 actually come into force?
How long is an Omani work licence valid?
Which nationalities need a medical certificate for an Oman work visa?
What happens if the worker fails the medical examination?
Does meeting Omanisation quotas reduce every work permit fee?
How long do I have to get the resident card after the worker arrives?
If you would rather not manage the licence application, the fee category, the visa file and the resident card as four separate transactions, that is the kind of sequencing a Sanad office does daily. Bring the commercial registration, the job title you actually want on the licence, and the worker's passport.