Devpt expansion requires changing methodology
Keeping abreast with the increasingly developing aspects of life is a challenge as that requires upto-date methodology responding to the constant economic, social, business and health expansion.
Particularly, water and power sectors in Oman face escalating demand as they come in line with the massive constructional motion reflecting relatively high living standards. To meet those needs, the government seeks help of local private sector investments as well as foreign investments to boost efficiency and quality of services provided to public.
According to the Public Authority for Electricity and Water (PAEW), 98 per cent of urban territories are covered with power supply as the production capacity reached 8,000 megawatts by the end of 2016. The demand on electricity is expected to increase within the next four years at a growth of 11 per cent annually.
Enhancing infrastructure for electricity and water sectors will be in need all times because they have destiny of coming generations in hand. For this reason, the Sultanate is keen to implement sustainable management in the sectors and to use state-of-art tools aiming at producing and transporting water as well as in energy production.
Siemens Oman is one of foreign investing firms that build local landmarks with global expertise. Whether in power infrastructure, airports, ports, public buildings and hospitals, Siemens has made a commitment to put its footprint featured with quality, wellestablished and high efficiency.
It was founded in Oman in August 2006, but in fact existed in Oman in 1880 in Musandam, at Telegraph Island “Jazirat al Maqlab”. Markus Erich Strohmeier, CEO of Siemens Oman narrated to Observer how Siemens first started in the Sultanate confirming that the company’s footprint is constantly growing.
Talking about local expertise, he said that the company has 100 employees, 28 are Omani nationals. “I am proud of the Omani engineers working for us.
In that gas turbine project, we have 5 Omani engineers who were trained in Berlin in Germany to do maintenance.
They maintain different plants not only in Oman but also in Gulf countries because they have got the skill and they are internationally specialists. At business administration level, we also have well-educated Omanis working in offices. In our company in Oman, Omanis occupy 3 positions in every top 5 business admin positions as we are committed to develop local abilities”.
About initiatives, CEO of Siemens said that the company has adopted Science experiments activity which is held inside Children Museum in Qurum for three years now.
“We have done this activity three times so far. It is about providing experiment boxes which contain more than 60 technical experiments. Children can connect electricity and touch real components of wind power, wind turbine and solar cells. During the last initiative, about 3,800 children visited the museum according to the Ministry of Heritage and culture. Usually children don’t have the chance to experiment this, so we thought this kind of science must touch children from a very young age as they are the future generation”.