Khaleej Times

DUBAI, Oct. 18: A UAE national woman has acted a Good Samaritan for 36-year-old Basheer, an Indian national suffering from failures of his both kidneys, and pushed to living in penury and misery.

An ailing Basheer, who lived in a cramped labour camp in Dubai for two years ago without a job, before returning home to India, has been extended financial help by a UAE national woman who had read his story in Khaleej Times in November 2005.

Basheer currently lives in Kerala with his wife and two little children. Thanks to the UAE national’s financial help, Basheer not only has a roof over head in India now, but he is also undergoing dialysis three times a week. However, doctors at the Malabar Institute of Medical science in Kerala say that kidney transplantation is not possible in Basheer’s case as he is very weak and suffers from prolonged diabetes.

Speaking to Khaleej Times from Calicut in India, Basheer said, “I am a happy man now. I did not have any hope of living so long when I was spending my days in the labour camp without any money for treatment. But the UAE national woman changed my life. My family had no house here. The UAE national helped me purchase a house and has been paying for all my family expenses as well as for my treatment for almost two years now.”

Basheer, who has lost his vision, expressed hope to meet the Good Samaritan, who has brought some happiness into his life.

Roksana, Basheer’s wife said: “There was a time when we had no hope left. God has sent this woman to help us out.”

“I now hope for another miracle, that my husband gets cured of his ailment completely,” added Roksana.

Meanwhile, speaking to Khaleej Times, the UAE national woman who wished to remain anonymous, said she was moved by the plight of Basheer as highlighted in the newspaper article. “I immediately decided to extend help to him and with my husband’s support, we decided to do the best for the poor man and his family,” she said.

“When we learnt that he did not have a house, we decided to buy a house for him and his family,” she said.

“His body is not ready for a kidney transplant yet. We hope he will respond better to treatment soon. In case kidney transplant is possible, we’ll bear all the expenses,” she said.

Khaleej Times

DUBAI, Oct. 18: Corporate and individual users in Dubai faced difficulty in accessing the Internet throughout the day yesterday.

The service provider, etisalat, neither confirmed nor denied the situation saying it had not received any complaint in this regard.

When alerted by Khaleej Times, a spokesperson said: “We will look into the matter and if a problem is detected, we will rectify it as soon as possible.”

The majority of banks and government departments, including Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department and Ministry of Health, said they had not faced any major problem. However, several Internet cafe owners in Dubai complained that it was difficult to get connected and, if at all connected, it was slow.

“We have lost several customers because of the slow or no connectivity which we suspect was due to some snag in etisalat’s main server. When we contacted etisalat officials, we were told to check our connections as everything was fine at their end. We can’t say where exactly was the problem,” said a representative of Broadway Internet Cafe located in Jafiliya.

Corporate users said office work was delayed due to the connectivity problem. “Early morning yesterday, we had a problem connecting the Net to our office computers. We contacted etisalat thinking that there could be a problem in our office connections. An etisalat technician who checked the office server told us that their main router was working and there might be a problem in our internal servers,” claimed a representative of a Dubai-based company.

“We have had minor glitches on and off,” he added.

Work in companies located on Shaikh Zayed Road and in Al Quoz was also affected. “Our routine work was hit badly, and we were behind our daily deadlines,” said a representative of another company.

Several home users also said they had difficulty in accessing the Internet since early morning.

Mariam Yaghi, a freelance graphic designer who works from home, said she was unable to meet her deadlines because she could not log onto the Internet.

“I had to resend my file attachments a couple of times because my office said that they did not receive them. I normally do not face such a problem because I have installed the high speed Internet connection, but yesterday was really a bad Internet day,” she said.

Another user, Mohammed Fadel, said he felt the Internet had been extremely slow for the past couple of days.