NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL

Nations join forces to improve the lot of labour

UAE - OCT 30: The UAE, the Philippines and India are planning a pilot project to improve the quality of life for migrant workers, the Minister of Labour, Saqr Ghobash, announced in Manila yesterday.

The project will try out practical measures to help temporary contractual workers, looking particularly at improving the recruitment and “pre-deployment” processes used before they reach the UAE, the state news agency, WAM, reported.

Providing “decent” living and working conditions will form the second part of the project, to be prepared with contributions from the Arab Labour Organisation, the International Labour Organisation and the International Organisation for Migration.

The pilot project will also try to find ways to facilitate the return of migrant workers to their home countries and their reintegration into their communities, Mr Ghobash said.

Mr Ghobash is attending the Global Forum on Migration and Development in the Philippine capital, heading a delegation from the labour, foreign affairs and interior ministries and the National Media Council.

He said the pilot project would lead to the introduction of “new policy guidelines and enforceable measures that ensure the protection of wages, the provision of adequate work and living conditions, access to avenues of legal redress, and the upholding of fundamental human rights.”

Mr Ghobash said he hoped the process would eventually lead to a “comprehensive regional framework” for co-operation between migrant workers’ countries of origin and their destinations. That was one of the main recommendations of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, a conference held in January between worker destination countries, including several Gulf countries, and countries of origin such as India, Nepal and the Philippines.

The Abu Dhabi Labour Declaration signed at the conference proclaimed a “new collaborative approach” to labour issues, including exploitation of workers.

During the four-day Manila forum, which ends today, Mr Ghobash discussed the UAE’s efforts to reform its labour market, especially through creating regional and international partnerships.

“In the past, progress towards these objectives has been hampered by the fact that the countries of origin and destination often had separate agendas as well as different and not infrequently conflicting priorities for action,” Mr Ghobash said.

“It is precisely for this reason that the UAE has attached such importance in recent years to improving dialogue with individual countries of origin and seeking the establishment of broader consultations at the multinational level,” he added.

There are an estimated 320,000 Filipinos and 1.4 million Indians working in the UAE.

New facilities bring health care closer to workers

ABU DHABI - OCT 30: Three new hospitals designed especially for labourers will provide thousands with better access to emergency care and other health services, the company behind them says.

The hospitals, costing about Dh220 million (US$60m) in total, will be located at the Worker’s Village in Musaffah and Al Raha. One has already been built and the others are due to be completed next year.

The first, a day-surgery hospital, opened in Musaffah last week and is already receiving between 50 and 100 patients a day.

The other two will have more than 200 beds between them and will treat emergency and trauma cases and conduct surgeries.

Lifeline Hospital Group, which is funding the hospitals and will manage them, hopes the Lifecare Al Raha Hospital will be completed early next year and Lifecare Musaffah by next summer.

Dr Shamsheer Vayalil, managing director of the Lifeline Hospital Group, said the demand for medical services was high and the hospitals would make a dramatic difference to the lives of the labourers.

“The demand is very high because of all the construction happening in Abu Dhabi at the moment,” Dr Vayalil said.

“We believe we should be providing health care for all. We do not agree with just giving health care to one single group but not to another.”

The news comes a week after the Minister of Labour, Saqr Ghobash, announced that a national standard for the quality of workers’ accommodation was to be introduced.

Mr Ghobash said there would be no more excuses from construction companies for not providing adequate living conditions for workers, and the Ministry of Labour would carry out more spot checks.

He praised an Aldar workers’ camp on Yas Island, which has its own specialist medical facilities.

Dr Charles Stanford, the Lifeline Hospital Group medical director, said he expected the number of outpatients at the new day surgery to rise as labourers became more aware of the services.

The group is expecting to see more than 500 patients a day at the Musaffah hospital because it was so close to their housing.

“Previously they would have to travel into Abu Dhabi or Dubai to receive treatment,” Dr Stanford said.

“The period after an serious accident is called the golden hour where if care is provided you can save a life; if not the patient may not survive.

“These hospitals will be providing care where it is needed and we hope to ultimately save lives.”

The Al Raha hospital will have 80 beds and some 40 doctors, some of whom will work on rotation and consultation.

There will be a further 150 beds at the Lifecare Musaffah Hospital with 60 to 70 doctors.

Aldar Properties announced in January it was building permanent accommodation in Musaffah to house 100,000 workers.

The first phase of the project, which will house 20,000 workers, is expected to be completed by late summer. The workers will be living close to the Al Raha Beach and Yas Island developments.

Al Raha Beach is a development built along 5.2 million sq m of beachfront and is expected to house up to 120,000 residents when finished.

Health insurance for all expatriates living and working in Abu Dhabi became mandatory in 2006.

Daman, the national health insurer, said the number of insured people jumped from a maximum of 150,000 to 1.3 million after the law was introduced.

Daman offers a basic Dh600 package, which has about 800,000 members, mostly labourers.

Some hospitals have reported twice as many patients as they had before mandatory insurance was started.

US health firm to run maternity hospital

ABU DHABI - OCT 30: Health authorities have hired a well-known US health care group to manage the only specialist maternity hospital in the capital.

The Corniche Hospital, where more than 12,000 babies are born every year, is to be managed by Johns Hopkins Medicine International of the US in an effort to raise standards.

According to Dr Ahmed al Mazrouei, chairman of Health Authority Abu Dhabi and the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (Seha), the hospital will be run according to “modern, patient-centred approaches and international clinical best practices”.

This is the third facility in Abu Dhabi to be affiliated with the Johns Hopkins group since 2006, joining Tawam Hospital in Al Ain and Al Rahba Hospital on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.

Harry Benny, chief executive of the group’s international division, said: “The clinical expertise of Johns Hopkins and our management knowledge will ensure that Al Corniche Hospital asserts its position as one of the best facilities in the Seha health system and the premier institution for maternity care in the region.”

The Executive Council has said international partnerships are a key component of the Government’s strategy to provide world-class health care. There are already agreements with the Cleveland Clinic, also in the US, and Thailand’s Bumrungrad International Hospital to manage other hospitals in the emirate.

Seha did not provide details of the Corniche Hospital agreement. In March 2006, it was agreed that Johns Hopkins would conduct a nine-month assessment of Tawam Hospital’s needs, help implement management procedures and train local medical staff.

The Corniche Hospital was opened 31 years ago and has been managed by United Medical. It has 235 beds, including 50 in neonatal intensive care.

This month The National reported long waits for patients because of a new computer system. Recently Seha took full control of the hospital’s operations, bringing it in line with the government hospitals in the emirate.

Carl Stanifer, chief executive of Seha, said the transition plan had been worked out and all the staff at the hospital were aware of the changes.

”We expect the process will be completely seamless for patients,” he said.

UAE tops league of wasteful countries

UAE - OCT 30: A global report compiled with the help of the Government has ranked the UAE as the worst in the world for its per capita environmental footprint.

Released today, the most up-to-date version of the Living Planet report put the UAE at the top of the list measuring various countries’ impact on the earth.

The US was second, followed by Kuwait, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The report was produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in conjunction with the Global Footprint Network and the Zoological Society of London.

When the UAE was first listed as a leader in the chart, in the 2006 edition of the report, UAE officials pointed out that no verified locally sourced data was used in compiling the rankings. Instead, the WWF had to rely on estimates by international organisations.

The report released today contained local data for the first time.

The authors of the report and the Government jointly collaborated on a project coined
Al Basama Al Beeiya to gather 6,000 data points to help produce the document. The data points mainly covered two areas – population and energy consumption – that are the main factors in calculating a country’s environmental footprint.

The environmental footprint measures the territory - for example crop land, grazing land, forest or fishing grounds - required to produce the food, fibre and wood a country consumes, in addition to the area needed to absorb the waste and carbon dioxide (CO2) released through activities, and the land necessary to build infrastructure.

This measurement is known as a global hectare.

When compared with the total amount of productive land available, this measure could indicate how quickly people would use up the planet’s resources or, in cases of serious overuse, how many planets would be needed to provide all the resources to sustain a certain lifestyle.

The UAE’s per capita footprint fell to 9.5 global hectares, from 11.9 global hectares in the previous edition. The 2008 report used statistics from three years ago.

It is not just the UAE that has been living beyond its environmental means.

More than three quarters of the world’s people live in nations that are ecological debtors, where national consumption has outstripped biological capacity.

For the first time, the report also featured a new “water footprint” measuring water use and the significance of water traded in the form of commodities.

A cotton T-shirt, for example, requires 2,900 litres of water in its production.
On average, people around the world each consume 1.24 million litres (about half the amount contained in an Olympic-sized swimming pool) of water a year, but the total varies widely between countries.

The UAE was not ranked in the water index as data for the country was not available for the report.

Overall, because of its relatively small population, the UAE only accounted for one
per cent of humanity’s overall environmental footprint.

But the country’s very high per capita environmental footprint needed to be understood, experts said.

The UAE’s geographic location put it at a disadvantage compared to countries with more moderate climates, said Majid al Mansouri, the secretary general of the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD).

“We are living in a dry climate. We need to use more energy for air conditioning and desalination,” Mr Mansouri said.

Because of the energy need to cool homes and offices in summer, the UAE’s winter power demand is only 30 per cent of the summer peak, data from Transco, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority shows.

Another reason, Mr Mansouri said, had to do with the country’s status as a re-exporting country.

This, he said, created difficulties with calculating the amount of imported goods consumed in the country.

Many of these goods are being re-exported, but the report still counted them as having been consumed here.

The issue, Mr Mansouri said, had been partly resolved in the 2008 report.
Razan al Mubarak, the managing director of the Emirates Wildlife Society, which works in association with the WWF, said while the desert environment put some constraints on sustainable living, people’s “high consumption patterns” also contributed to the problem.

Ms Mubarak added: “The options for a more sustainable lifestyle are not available here.”

Despite ambitious government plans, initiatives such as recycling schemes and public transport are in their infancy.

Sustainable products, such as hybrid vehicles that use less petrol, are not being sold, while bureaucratic hurdles and the lack of government incentives have been hindering the adoption of renewable energy systems.

Changes are coming, however.

Dubai is a year away from launching the first of four light rail lines to serve the emirate, while earlier this week Abu Dhabi launched three new bus routes. Both emirates are preparing green building codes that are expected to start being implemented next year.

“The green building codes are addressing a big portion of energy efficiency. Again, the key here is how do you push industry to ensure implementation,” Ms Mubarak said.

After launching Masdar, the world’s first carbon-neutral city, as well as a clean-energy investment fund, the Abu Dhabi Government was considering other ways to promote renewable energy, Mr Mansouri said.

The Government’s Estidama initiative, designed to make the city the most environmentally friendly in the region, will require buildings to be powered at least 10 per cent by renewable resources, he said.

On Tuesday, Dubai officials announced the emirate’s own green building code was looking to mandate the use of solar thermal power to produce hot water and even electricity.

Measures to encourage energy efficiency and clean energy are essential if the UAE’s environmental footprint is to be reduced.

The biggest contributor to the UAE’s environmental footprint is due to carbon dioxide emissions, which account for almost eight of the 9.5 global hectares per person the country uses.

Ms Mubarak and Mr Mansouri said people, through everyday lifestyle choices, also had a role to play in lowering the UAE’s environmental footprint.

Driving less, sharing car trips and choosing public transport when available make a difference, Ms Mubarak said, as do using energy-efficient electrical appliances and turning off devices that are not in use.

Capital Gate leans toward record

Abu Dhabi - OCT 30: Abu Dhabi’s Capital Gate is expected to enter the record books as the world’s most inclined building, with a lean four times greater than the famous tower in Pisa, Italy.

The project’s developer, Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (Adnec), and architects at the UK-based RMJM, have submitted an application to Guinness World Records. The Capital Gate leans at an angle of 18 degrees from vertical, compared to the tower of Pisa’s tilt of just under four degrees.

“Capital Gate will be a building that the world will talk about, not because it has surpassed another building as the world’s tallest, but because of its aesthetic splendour and technical achievement,” said Simon Horgan, Adnec’s chief executive.

The 35-storey building is part of the Capital Centre development, an Dh8 billion (US$2.2bn) project to build a micro city around the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre. At 160 metres it will be the tallest building in the development.

“Capital Gate will be one of a kind,” said David Pringle, the chief executive of RMJM Asia and the Middle East, adding that its diagonal structure will support the tilt.

The unique posture has created challenges in the construction process, which began in October 2007. To accommodate gravitational, wind and seismic pressures on the tower, the concrete used for the building was pumped onto a dense mesh of reinforced steel. The mesh sits above a distribution of 490 piles, which are drilled 30 metres into the ground.

The tower is scheduled to be completed by next autumn.

The current record for the most tilted building is held by a 15th-century church steeple in Germany, which tilts at an angle of 5.19 degrees. The 27-metre steeple in the northern village of Suurhusen was awarded the title last year after a project to stabilise the Pisa tower straightened it by 18 inches (45cm). At its worst in 1990, the tower listed by 5.5 degrees.

While the Capital Gate is being built purposefully to lean, the Pisa tower was intended to stand vertically. However, having been built on weak and unstable subsoil with foundations just three metres deep, it began to sink when construction started on its third storey in 1178.

Flintoff to launch Emirates academy

DUBAI - OCT 30: Andrew Flintoff, England cricket’s talismanic all-rounder, is opening a cricket academy in Dubai and has also looked at potential homes and at schools for his three children.

The player’s agent said Flintoff, 30, was committed to playing in England every summer, but a move to the UAE for the rest of the year would allow him to look after the academy. Dubai is also now home to the game’s governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC).

Neil Fairbrother, the former England cricketer who represents Flintoff, said: “The Andrew Flintoff Cricket Academy was founded last year [in England] and it has always been the intention to launch it in other locations. Andrew was in Dubai to look at how to found an academy there and where to put it.

“The plan is that the academy will grow and grow and not just be something in England.”

Mr Fairbrother said he could not comment on Flintoff’s personal life but the cricketer has been shown around schools and has contacted an estate agent to inquire about housing.

A friend of the family said: “He really liked one school. He has a daughter who is four years old so it is important that should the family move out to Dubai, everything is right. It would not be all year round but would be a good base for him.”

Should Flintoff, whose two sons are aged two and six months, move to the UAE he would join other leading sportsmen, such as Roger Federer, the tennis player, and Henrik Stennson, the golfer, in basing themselves in Dubai.

Such a move would be a first for an England cricketer and undermine attempts by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to keep its players within the national set-up and use them to attract audiences and investors to an English Premier League.

The move, should it materialise, would indicate a further shift in cricket’s balance of power towards Asia, following the ICC’s move from Lord’s, England’s iconic home of cricket.

Mr Fairbrother said that Flintoff remained committed to Lancashire, his county club, and said a move to Dubai would not indicate that he was seeking a lucrative contract in the Indian Premier League.

Flintoff has been courted by both the Indian Cricket League and Indian Premier League with million-dollar contracts.

A base in Asia would allow him to increase his profile but could bring him into conflict with the ECB.

Nine million viewers tuned in to watch Flintoff inspire England to win the 2005 Ashes series against Australia. He led a victory parade through London, and was later honoured by the Queen.

The completion of the Sports City stadium in Dubai and the news that Pakistan will be using both that stadium and facilities in Abu Dhabi as their home ground for games have established the UAE as a cricketing hub.

Dubai already boasts several cricket academies but the profile of Flintoff is such that an academy bearing his name would be an asset to the country’s development programme and quest to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 15 years.