NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Testing gets under way on GPS taxis
ABU DHABI - SEP. 07: Testing has started on a dispatching system that will allow passengers to call for a taxi and permit drivers to locate them using a GPS system.
The scheme could be operational as early as next month, sources say, although officials at the Centre for Regulation of Transport by Hire Cars (TransAD) would not commit to a date.
The service could be launched first in Shahama or Al Ain before being introduced in Abu Dhabi. Around 1,300 taxis are equipped with mobile data terminals.
The tracking devices would allow companies to pinpoint a driver’s precise location, monitor speed, whether it was on hire or available, if the ignition was on or off and how many trips had been made.
“It will be like we are inside the taxi with the drivers,” said Tariq Quwaider Bafleh, the general manager of Emirates Taxi.
For Dh2.50 (US61¢), between 6am and 10pm, and Dh3 during later hours, residents would be able to call a 24-hour dispatch centre staffed by 12 operators, and have a taxi sent to them.
Drivers would be sent a message when a passenger was waiting and could then view their exact position.
They would also be able to check how much they had earned that day and to communicate with the call centre.
TransAD and CERT Info-track Telematics, the company providing the mobile devices, have programmed the GPS units with the location of nearly every major landmark, named building and main road in the emirate.
The system will be updated when a new address scheme, which will result in each street in Abu Dhabi being given a unique name, and buildings numbered, is introduced.
The planning stage should be completed by mid-September and the system is expected to be operational by early next year.
In the meantime, TransAD is asking users to be patient while the new dial-a-taxi programme is introduced, explaining that passengers, call-centre staff, drivers and franchisees will all have to learn to use the new system effectively.
A phone-in service is already in place in Dubai, and the Dubai Taxi Agency, which last month added 1,000 vehicles to its fleet, said it had received many complaints from passengers left waiting for long periods.
Still, Sally Soheili, 24, a business executive with DLA Piper in Dubai, said a phone system could be useful to passengers who booked a taxi far enough in advance.
“In rush hour [in Dubai] you can be waiting for up to two hours on the street trying to get a cab,”she observed. “But, with the service, if you book in advance, it’s very efficient so it will be good for Abu Dhabi and will save you waiting in the heat.”
Reem Mohammed, 28, an office administrator at an IT company in Abu Dhabi, said she had her doubts that the service would make any significant difference as long as there was a shortage of taxis and other transit options.
“Taxis never seem to be available,” she said at about 5pm, after calling two taxi companies and being told no drivers were available. “I guess it seems to be a problem of not only quantity and availability, but [the driver’s] lack of knowledge of the city’s streets as well.”
Jolie Santos was also sceptical of the scheme, but said she would “give it a try”.
“If I came outside and saw too many people waiting I might call,” she said.
Meanwhile, Amer George Oweis, 31, said he thought the system would “definitely work”.
“It won’t necessarily make my life easier, because I have a car, but it’s definitely a better system.”
TransAD said a campaign to promote the call centre’s launch date would precede the system’s roll-out.
About 2,500 of the new silver taxis have been introduced by the city’s seven taxi franchisees so far, said Huda al Kaabi, TransAD communications officer. TransAD phased out approximately 800 of the older gold and white taxis but had slowed that roll-out during the summer months.
How will the new taxi service affect you? Will it make your life easier?
Abu Dhabi residents could soon be booking taxis in advance and taxi drivers will be able to find them using a GPS system. The scheme could be operational as early as next month. How will the new taxi service affect you? Will it make your life easier?
Abu Dhabi taxis to be equipped with GPS
ABU DHABI - SEP. 07: People will soon be able to book taxis more easily as dispatchers are equipped with GPS systems that allow them to track drivers.
Initially, fewer than 100 taxis will take part in the pilot project involving the new system, which will allow dispatchers at a call centre to guide drivers to customers who have called for taxis.
Quentin Fulljames-Curtis, the taxi and limousine adviser for the Centre for Regulation of Transport by Hire Cars (TransAD), added that the system would first be tried only in several outlying areas, and not in the city centre.
“I know that’s where everybody wants it, but we have to ensure it is stable in those areas before we bring it to the city centre.”
For Dh2.50 (US$0.68) during the day, and Dh3 at night, passengers could be picked up by the nearest available cab, once the long-awaited system is operational.
TransAD is to meet with Etisalat today, five months after the regulator announced plans for the system, to determine in which areas connection could be provided for the launch, Mr Fulljames-Curtis said. More details, including a start date, would be available in the coming weeks.
While the new tracking device will direct drivers to passengers, it will also allow TransAD to follow their movements on a digital map. More than 600 taxis are already equipped with the GPS system technology but the network has not been activated yet.
In May, TransAD said it could not commit to a timeline for rolling out the system because it was waiting on Etisalat. However, the two sides had since worked together to develop the system in a couple of regions, Mr Fulljames-Curtis said.
Taxi customers said they would be grateful for the call centre. “It is very difficult to find a taxi, even in the summer,” said Nahid, a Sudanese woman who was trying to hail passing drivers from the shade of a tree on Airport Road.
About 2,500 of the new silver taxis have been introduced by the city’s seven taxi franchisees so far, Mr Fulljames-Curtis said. TransAD phased out about 800 of the older gold and white taxis but had slowed that roll-out during the summer months.
TransAD launched the new taxis in November 2007. The seven companies were chosen to operate equal portions of the fleet, with each company responsible for recruiting and training drivers.
The new system was an attempt to answer concerns about the low quality of service in the older taxis, and is part of a broader plan to revamp public transport in the capital, in keeping with Abu Dhabi Plan 2030.
Fares, starting at Dh2.60 for a standard silver taxi, plus 65 fils per kilometre, are frozen until at least November.
TransAD opted to set fares low when the silver taxis were launched, both to ensure their competitiveness with older taxis and to guarantee affordable transport for residents until the city’s public transportation network is established.
Six oil rig crash victims identified
DUBAI - SEP. 07: The families of all but one of the victims of Thursday’s helicopter crash off the coast of Dubai have been told of their loss.
Seven people died when their helicopter, a Bell 212 operated by the Dubai-based firm Aerogulf Services, crashed into an oil rig shortly after take-off on Wednesday night.
A secretary at the offices of Aerogulf said yesterday that the company’s British manager, Chris Brown, had been piloting the helicopter and was among the dead. The company released no further details.
Foreign media reports named two of the passengers as Diosdado Buhangin, 48, of the Philippines, a petroleum technician and father of five, and Julias Pereira, 37, a materials co-ordinator from India.
The other victims are believed to be the Venezuelan co-pilot of the helicopter, an American, a Pakistani and an Indian. All of the passengers were contract workers for Dubai Petroleum, which owns the oil rig where the accident took place.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a source at Dubai Petroleum said the family of the second Indian victim lived in a remote part of the country, which made it difficult to inform them of his death.
He said the helicopter was on a “round trip” flight from Dubai International Airport, and had dropped off some passengers on the rig before taking off for another drilling platform.
“There is obviously the need to establish exactly what caused this, and with the police being involved the company has to be open about everything so as to establish just what occurred in the minutes before the crash,” he said.
“It is unlikely that will be known this week for the obvious reason that those who saw exactly what happened are now dead – they are having to rely almost entirely on physical evidence.”
Initial reports said the helicopter hit a crane on the oil rig seconds after take-off, broke in two and burst into flames.
Police were still conducting DNA tests on some of the bodies, which were badly burnt by the fire. A police source said they had established the names of the dead but were running the tests to ensure that the correct bodies were returned to their families.
Police and the General Civil Aviation Authority began an investigation into the crash, which is expected to take many weeks.
Speaking to ANC Prime News in the Philippines at the weekend, Diosdado Buhangin’s wife, Vilma, said her husband had been working in Dubai for the past six years.
“I became hysterical when I learnt he had died,” she said. “He last visited the Philippines in August.”
She said she was worried for the future of her five children, who are all in school, despite offers of assistance from his company. She also appealed to the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration for help in repatriating his body.
In India, relatives and friends of Julias Pereira spoke of their distress at the news of his death.
“Julias was a simple and hardworking man. This is a big shock to all of us,” said a friend, adding that Pereira had been in Dubai for about a year and was due to celebrate his birthday at the end of this month.
A spokesman for Dubai Petroleum said the Rashid oil field, which was closed after the accident, had reopened.
Legend hidden in a single grain
Shoba Padmanabhan knows the ingredients by heart. Three types of pickle, lemon, mango, ginger paste, plantain chips, at least half a dozen varieties of specially mainade curries, curd, poppadoms and payasam, a sweet pudding, all ceremoniously displayed on a large banana leaf.
These are the crucial components for the traditional feast of the 10-day harvest festival of Onam, the biggest in the Indian state of Kerala.
But there is one further ingredient without which the celebration would be incomplete. This year, however, Indians living in the UAE are facing the unthinkable prospect of an Onam without the traditional and culturally significant serving of non-basmati rice.
At the end of March, faced with growing inflation and as part of an attempt to control the price of basic foodstuffs, the Indian government introduced a year-long ban on the export of the rice, a staple in Kerala and for the estimated two million expatriates from the region, most of whom live in the Middle East.
The Rice Exporters Association of Kerala immediately appealed against the decision, telling the Indo-Asian News Service: “This is going to be a two-way loss for Kerala and Keralites. Firstly, Keralites abroad will not be able to eat their favourite variety of rice and secondly it is going to be a huge loss for the exporters.”
In India, rice feeds more people than any other single commodity. The plain non-basmati variety is found in almost every home and is considered a staple, yet tasty, food for the common man.
The country is the second largest producer of rice in the world and usually exports more than four million tonnes a year. The UAE, on the other hand, imports more than 750,000 tonnes of rice, mostly from India, but also from Pakistan, Thailand and Egypt. Until this year’s export ban, Indian rice flooded the UAE market and was available in every shop.
A similar ban imposed in Oct 2007 was soon lifted following protests by rice exporters. However, this time India is sticking to its guns. At the beginning of July the Supreme Court, responding to petitions against the ban, upheld the government’s decision, declaring that without it the country faced the very real prospect of famine.
Last month, the government said the ban was likely to remain in force for at least three months, at which point the situation would be reassessed. Essentially, the delay was to see how the monsoon season played out; if the crop was blessed and rice performed well, the door to exports could be opened again.
India’s decision had widespread consequences, not least among its countrymen living abroad, and triggered panic-buying in many countries. It also saw the price of Thai rice shoot up by 135 per cent; countries in the Gulf, including the UAE, are currently importing most of their rice from Thailand.
According to reports last month, between January and April UAE imports of Thai rice reached US$19.4 million, compared with only US$8.3m over the same period last year. In the whole of 2007, Thailand exported about 60,000 tonnes of rice to the UAE, generating revenue of more than $40m for the country.
Thailand, which is believed to have a rice surplus of nine million tonnes, may be sitting pretty, but the current situation is a reminder for the UAE that it is far too heavily reliant on imports for all food products and lends urgency to the country’s plans to invest aggressively in agriculture and livestock in countries with fertile farmlands, such as Sudan, Egypt, Pakistan – and even India.
When news of the export ban broke, the thoughts of the expatriate Malayalees from the south Indian state of Kerala flew forward to Sept 12, the start of the 10-day festival of Onam, which culminates in the all-important meal, “Onasadhya”.
Many scoured supermarkets and every possible alternative outlet in an attempt to secure sufficient supplies of non-basmati rice. Mrs Padmanabhan’s family in Dubai were among them. “We bought 20kg when we heard that the ban would be imposed,” she says. “We are fine for now, but this Onam the guest list will be smaller than usual.” A few months ago, a 20kg sack of non-basmati rice would have fetched about Dh50; now the going rate is closer to Dh150. But whatever the price, expatriate Malayalees are likely to pay it.
“Rice prices are through the roof,” says Mrs Padmanabhan. “We are paying more than twice the price for our favourite rice and it is still available only in very few places now.”
But why is non-basmati rice such a vital component part of life for expatriate Malayalees – and why will other types of rice not do? After all, basmati rice, a long-grained aromatic variety, is unaffected by the ban and is widely available. But although it is eaten extensively throughout the Middle East and is used to prepare biryani and is served with kebabs, it is not considered a suitable rice for the daily meal, especially among south Indians – let alone for the celebration of Onam, which begins on Friday.
Non-basmati rice is important to Malayalees on several levels, but no understanding of just how vital it is can be complete without an understanding of the legend of Onam. Tellingly for the Malayalees scattered throughout the UAE – working to improve the lives of loved ones that economic realities have forced them to leave behind – it is a legend that has at its heart the pain of involuntary exile and the gnawing longing for a lost homeland. According to the legend, Kerala was once ruled by Mahabali, a demon king who, despite his demonic antecedents, was actually a wise and fair ruler, under whom the state enjoyed a golden era.
According to the telling of the myth by the Society for the Confluence of Festivals in India, under King Mahabali “everybody was happy in the kingdom, there was no discrimination on the basis of caste or class. Rich and poor were equally treated.
There was neither crime, nor corruption. People did not even lock their doors, as there were no thieves in that kingdom. There was no poverty, sorrow or disease in the reign of King Mahabali and everybody was happy and content ...”
Everybody but the gods, that is. Mahabali’s good nature was his undoing. The deities grew jealous of his popularity and sent Lord Vishnu to test him. Disguised as Vamana, a poor dwarf, Vishnu appeared before the king to seek a favour. He asked only for as much land as he could cover in three paces.
As soon as Mahabali granted the apparently modest request, Vamana grew to gigantic proportions. His first step covered the sky; his second spanned the entire Earth. When he asked where he could place his third, King Mahabali, realising that the planet was poised for destruction, offered his head instead.
He had passed the test, but at the price of being driven into the lowest of the seven Hindu netherworlds. There, stripped of all worldly possessions, he had only one request, which was granted: that once a year he be allowed to visit his beloved Kerala and its people – and this is the day marked each year at the conclusion of the festival of Onam.
The point of the festival is to keep the king’s spirit happy by persuading him that all his people are prosperous and, as part of this, it is important that on display in each house there should be plenty of vegetables, fruits – and the right kind of rice.
“There is no Onam without our own Indian rice,” says Mrs Padmanabhan, expressing a view held adamantly by all her countrymen.
“Nothing else would taste good and nothing else will do.”
There is, says Sashi Variyath, secretary of the Sharjah Malayalee Association, who has celebrated the festival in the UAE for the past 21 years, a “saying in Kerala ... that even a poor, hungry man must celebrate Onam. I do not think the surging prices would stop any Malayalee from buying his favourite Indian rice for Onam.”
This year, the association is planning a grand Onam, featuring dance performances and an elaborate meal for hundreds of expatriate Indians, even though “The caterers have already warned us that this year each meal will cost much more because of the prices”, says Mr Variyath.
For exiled Malayalees, the love of non-basmati rice is about much more than a simple preference for a certain type of food. Many know – up to a point, at least – exactly how King Mahabali must have felt. For NP Ramachandran, the President of Dubai Priyadarshini, an Indian organisation that has been conducting Onam celebrations in Dubai for the past 20 years, the rice has tremendous cultural and psychological importance for those who find themselves so far from home at such a significant time of year.
“In Kerala, Onam is celebrated immediately after the harvest season and the fresh rice from the fields is used for preparations,” he says. “This, villagers say, has a special taste and smell to it. I think this is a significant aspect of Onam and the importance of the non-basmati Indian rice.”
The importance is, he says, also “psychological. The rice has a specific feel and taste. This taste adds to the Onasadhya and we have been maintaining that for generations.”
Manjula Nair, a college professor in Dubai and a regular Onam organiser, says she has always felt connected to the harvest festival.
“Kerala is known for its blossoming rice fields during the harvest season,” she says. “It helps Keralites living abroad to connect to the rice fields and even their family back home.”
Such a connection helps to make non-basmati rice a powerfully evocative symbol – and taste – of home. Small wonder that for Keralites everywhere the thought of using any other kind simply goes against the grain.
A rich man learns Dubai is not the place to commit a crime
Dubai - SEP 07: The accusations of corruption within the ruling Egyptian National Democratic Party (NDP) manifested themselves in two very different ways this summer. In July an Egyptian court stunned the Arab world when it acquitted NDP member Mamdouh Ismail, the owner of the 35-year-old ferry boat, Salam Boccacio 98, that sank off the shore of Egypt killing one thousand low -income Egyptians on their way back to their home country. Even though a parliamentary investigation found “a wicked collusion” between the boat operator and the Egyptian Commission of Maritime Safety that should have prevented the ferry from operating because it failed to meet minimum safety requirements, no person from either side was indicted.
The tragedy was compounded by the fact that most of those who perished were returning with savings that they earned while working abroad; savings that their families were eagerly anticipating to alleviate their poverty. Among the acquitted were three employees of the ferry boat company along with the owner’s son who fled Egypt with his father upon hearing the news of the sinking in 2006. Many doubted that the court would find the latter guilty as both the prosecutor and ferry boat owner were officials appointed by the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Among the numerous examples that illustrate how being a parliamentary member of the NDP brings with it many opportunities and windfall profits is the case of Ezz Steel. The Chairman of the company, Ahmad Ezz happens to head the influential NDP’s Committee of Organisational and Membership Affairs. The billionaire’s company reported a considerable jump in net profits to $191 million in the first half of 2008, up 63 per cent from the same period last year despite the fact that fuel prices have increased significantly. This may be due to the fact that the NDP heavily subsidises fuel to the tune of $11 billion a year, based on the recommendation of the budget committee that is also led by Mr Ezz. The subsidies contribute to the steel giant’s hold on 75 per cent of the steel production sector, a figure the NDP states is “not considered a monopoly”.
The list of names of parliamentary officials who have been accused of benefiting financially from their political affiliation in various ways is only growing. In fact, so attractive was the prospect of joining the NDP that the last elections in 2005 saw a rush by scores of Egyptian businessmen to enter parliament on the NDP ticket. Among them was Dr Hani Surour, an MP and the deputy chairman of the NDP’s Economic Affairs Committee who this summer was also acquitted of the charges of supplying Egyptian public hospitals with “200,000 contaminated blood bags infected with bacteria and fungi likely to cause cancer and hepatitis”. No wonder Transparency International rankings ties Egypt with Burkina Faso and Albania in the corrupt states index.
After this summer’s acquittals of Mr Ismail and Dr Surour, one could be forgiven for forming the impression that NDP membership offers a degree of immunity. That was until one of them crossed the border and allegedly committed a crime on foreign soil where the NDP is unable to pull the necessary strings.
The arrest of billionaire businessman Hisham Talaat Moustafa on charges of ordering the murder of the Lebanese singer Suzan Tamim in Dubai was an unprecedented step forward in the history of the country. So much so that fellow businessmen and NDP members lobbied unsuccessfully in order to keep Mr Moustafa’s immunity from being revoked, perhaps because of the serious precedent it established. The truth is if this heinous crime had taken place in many other Middle Eastern states Mr Moustafa might not have been indicted, along with the former Egyptian State Security officer Mohsen el Sukkari whom he allegedly paid $2 million to carry out the execution.
Dubai Police aren’t just any police force after all. Fresh from their investigations into corruption among officials within their own emirate, the Dubai police force put their skills into practice to investigate the murder of Ms Tamim. If the alleged killer and his backer had done their homework they would have learned for example that the Dubai Police have been consistently undergoing rigorous training in criminal behaviour and strategic planning conducted by the FBI Academy. They would have learned that Dubai Police are the very first in the Arab world to use DNA testing in criminal investigations as well as electronic fingerprinting. And they would have learned to keep their murderous hands away from my country – because in Dubai, crime doesn’t pay.
Sultan Al Qassemi is a Sharjah-based businessman and graduate of the American University of Paris. He is the founder of Barjeel Securities in Dubai.