An AC technician with a lucrative income!

Ali Al Matani -

ali.matani2@gmail.com -

I contacted an Omani technician who had left his job with a big company where he worked for a tempting salary, and had opened an air-conditioner maintenance shop as an entrepreneur. I asked him to come and repair air-conditioner at my home. He gave me an appointment of a date after May 5. It was almost two weeks far from the date I called him. When I asked him the reason for this long wait, he replied that your work is scheduled and is in waiting list.

He added that if I had contacted him after an hour, this could have caused further delay. This is because his phone keeps on ringing with calls for AC maintenance. This aroused a journalistic curiosity in me to investigate more so that he could write about it, his experience as entrepreneur who stood firmly in the market as a technician the job which was occupied by thousands of expatriates here.

I asked him why he did not increase the size of his team? He replied that he was looking for Omani youth to work with him to cope with work pressure and speed up the job and reduce the size of waiting list of complaints.

I asked him that how could I find young technicians so that they can work with him. He said that the issue is many youth are waiting for government jobs. He wanted that they should do independent work with him as colleagues as it is more lucrative. But the youth want administrative job.

The young technician said that some of them want to work after 11 am so that they can sleep in the morning.

When he spoke of the young generation, he was bitter and sour. He said that it was unfortunate that youth prefer to have easy jobs even if they have to remain in the waiting list for long time. This is happening even when work is available in the market. One should take this situation into account and do a self-assessment.

When I asked this ambitious youth about his income from his work as an AC mechanic, and how it is different from the job he had, he said he as an employee used to earn around RO 750 a month. But now in this own work, he saves RO 200 a day after deduction of all costs. It means his average income is RO 6,000. This income is not less than the salary of a person who occupies a high position in public or private sector in the Sultanate and in addition to that he has a team of three people and wants to expand it in near future provided he gets more people ready to work.

This young Omani not only signs contracts for annual maintenance of air-conditioners, but maintains fixed term contracts with some institutions, organisations and individuals. This gives him steady growth income and keeps his work further growing. This is a positive approach which is adopted by such youth who set up private projects and enterprises and work with efficiency.

This is a successful model of self-employment. It shows that independent technical work or jobs have huge returns and sometime prove to be very lucrative. Youth who are sitting idle waiting to get their dream jobs can follow this role model.

There is an Arab proverb which says that hands with skills never get wasted. Such role models set by these Omani youth only prove that this proverb is a fact. The only thing which is required is that we should provide them suitable environment so that they make efforts in this direction and explore opportunities.

There is no doubt that such businesses or enterprises have their own risks.

But this road which is full of challenges and has to be treaded carefully to reach the goal.