NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE ; THE NATIONAL

Fire in flat kills toddler and her brother

SHARJAH - OCT 29: A two-year-old Nepalese girl and her elder brother were killed and two other family members seriously injured when fire swept through a four-storey flat in Sharjah early yesterday.

The girl, who died from smoke inhalation, was identified by police as Kinoor. She was believed to have been in her bedroom when the fire broke out in the morning.

Her brother Ramesh, 26, suffered severe burns as flames engulfed the flat while neighbours tried to put them out with buckets of water.

The grandmother of the victims, Kidder Kumar, 64, suffered serious burns and a fractured back and hip when she tried to save Kinoor, then jumped from the fourth floor to save her own life.

Ms Kumar was in a critical condition in the Kuwaiti Hospital in Sharjah.

A second child, believed to be Kinoor’s sister, was also in intensive care after escaping from the burning flat in the building on Jamal Abdul Nasser Road.

Their father, Kailash, and their mother, Kalpana, had left for work and were not in the flat when the fire started.

Sharjah Civil Defence said the fire might have been started by a faulty electrical circuit in the air-conditioning system.

But residents said the flat was full of lamps, which were all lit to celebrate the Diwali festival of light when the fire began. Mohammed Khalim, a resident of the building, said he saw the children’s grandmother jumping from the flat.

“We pleaded to her not to do it, but she eventually did it when she saw fire spreading to her room,” Mr Khalim said.

Residents said more than 10 family members lived in the three-bedroom flat, which was gutted.

Essa Ahmed, a 17-year-old from the next building, said he saw thick smoke coming from the building as he left for school at 7.30am. He rushed in and knocked on doors to raise the alarm.

“I saw fire but there was silence along the building,” Essa said.

“No one seemed to know what was happening. All the people were still sleeping.”

He was later joined by a policeman who kicked in the door of the burning flat.

“The whole flat was dark with smoke,” Essa said.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes but the police guy brought a bucket of water... and we managed to remove one girl from another room that was not so much on fire.

“The girl had inhaled much smoke. We pulled her out and soon police ambulances were there and took her.”

Uthuman Ahmed, another resident of the building, said it had no fire extinguishers or fire-fighting equipment, and people had relied on buckets of water to fight the fire before firemen arrived.

“I have been in this building for more than 10 years.

“It’s one of the oldest on the road, without firefighting equipment and even the lift is not working,” Mr Ahmed said.

ID deadline firm despite chaos

UAE - OCT 29: The man in charge of the UAE’s identity card scheme said last night that the deadline for registration would not be extended past the end of the year, even though the Emirates Identity Authority appears to lack the capacity to cope with the hundreds of thousands of nationals and expatriates who have been told to register by Dec 31.

“Residents can’t be valid with government organisations after January,” said Thamer Rashed Al Qasemi, planning director of the EIDA. “There will be no change to the deadline.”

The registration system appeared in danger of being overwhelmed yesterday by the sheer number of expatriate professionals alarmed by last week’s revelation that they must register by the end of the year or lose access to all government-related services.

All Emiratis must be registered by the end of the year, and face fines and even prison sentences if they are not, but until recently expatriates had been given to understand that they had until the end of 2010 to register for their cards.

That remains the deadline, and the Government says expatriates will not face fines until then, but last week it emerged that after Dec 31 expatriates without an identity card would be unable to visit a doctor, register a mobile phone, open a bank account, enrol children in school or even buy or rent property.

Mr Qasemi said the registration campaign for expatriates had been launched in June: “We said in our advertisements not to leave it to the last minute.” However, while he said adverts had been carried in Arabic newspapers, he was unable to confirm that any were published in English-language newspapers.

“Arabic is the official language of the UAE,” he added.

Emiratis had been advised to start registering in April, he said, but had been slow to do so.

“We were registering 10 per cent of our capacity and now they are all coming in at once. In September, we registered only 12,000.”

In addition to the estimated 400,000 or more expatriate professionals who have now been told to register by the end of the year, 200,000 Emiratis have still not applied for their ID cards.

The EIDA, said Mr Qasemi, had the capacity to register approximately 100,000 applicants a month across the Emirates. “There is still 500,000 to 600,000 left to register... nobody showed up. It is a pathetic situation and it’s unfortunate.”

Yesterday queues began to form at 6.30am outside Al Karama Post Office, one of the EIDA’s main registration centres in Dubai. Despite assurances last week that the process would take each applicant no longer than 15 minutes, many faced waits of hours.

“I reached here at 7.30am and there were already 100 people ahead of me,” said K Kholid, a Philippine expat who was making his second attempt to register. It was now midday and he had been told he might be waiting until 10pm.

“I just got to the final stage but am too frustrated to wait any longer,” he said. “I got my form online and despite that I have to wait for so long. Many here are just waiting to get the form and fill it up.

“This is my second day and hopefully I will have the patience to get it done next time.”

Confused and anxious residents poured into the centre throughout the day. Most had no concrete information about what they had to do, by when they had to do it or what penalty, if any, they faced if they failed to register by the end of the year.

“Many of us are worried that we would be fined if we do not get the cards,” said Arvind Sudhakaran. “We are here just to check for ourselves on how much time we have got.”

People of many nationalities, including a large number of Indians, as well as Filipinos, Pakistanis and Arab nationals, packed the waiting area, although Europeans were conspicuous by their absence. Some slept on seats while others swapped horror stories about how long they had been there.

“They take an hour to move from one person to another,” said one. “They really need more people here.” There was, said another, “a separate counter for those who have registered online and that seems to be moving faster”.

That, however, appeared to be wishful thinking. People who had registered online for appointments said they had also waited a long time to be seen.

“My family and I registered online and we got an SMS message that gave us an appointment of 12.15pm,” said an Indian man who had come to the centre with his wife and two young children.

“But I see that they are running much behind the schedule and it looks like I will have to wait for hours. I do not understand why they give us appointments if they can’t keep it.”

Time and time again, the hard-pressed officials manning the counters had to try to explain what one admitted was a confusing registration process. The waiting period, he conceded, was far too long; the centre was open from 7.30am to 10pm but did not accept new applicants after 6pm.

Application forms can be downloaded online, free of charge, at the authority’s website – emiratesid.ae – or picked up at the centres, where they cost Dh40. They can also be collected at any Emirates Post office, also for a charge of Dh40, where they can also be submitted, in which case applicants receive a letter notifying them of an appointment.

In theory, appointments can also be made by telephoning a single number at the authority – 600 523432. However, after repeated attempts yesterday to get through, it emerged that such was the demand for registration appointments that none was available in Abu Dhabi before Nov 27.

The situation in the capital yesterday was just as bad as in Dubai.Emiratis and expatriates queued for hours at the identity-card office at the Ministry of Municipalities, near Airport Road.

“The place is like a zoo,” said Pete Comber, 60, a Briton who works at the capital’s Civil Aviation Authority and who had waited with his wife for almost five hours. “There are people everywhere. You wait and wait and then get shuttled from one desk to another. It’s a joke.”

Young dodge the internet censors

UAE/DUBAI - OCT 29: Internet blocks imposed in the UAE and other Middle East countries are failing to stop young people from seeing the censored websites, security experts were told yesterday.

A survey of internet habits showed that many young people in the region have used proxy servers or software to get around censorship, suggesting that blocks imposed in the UAE and other countries are little deterrent to a generation that has grown up with technology. The results of the survey were released at the National Security Summit, which ended yesterday.

More than two-thirds of the 16-to 35-year-olds surveyed said they had used the internet to communicate with people it would normally be considered culturally inappropriate for them to interact with, such as members of the opposite sex.

Outside the summit, Dan Healy, the chief executive officer of Real Opinions, which carried out the research, said because the survey was conducted anonymously and online, people were more comfortable expressing their opinions than they might be in person.

“The internet, especially social-networking sites, can be a barometer of opinion for what people are thinking, both in individual countries and the region as a whole,” Mr Healy said. “Research like this can hold up a mirror to examine the kind of environment that is being created, and allow governments to take action to alleviate potential problems.”

According to the survey, most young people used the internet to help with education, while 39 per cent said they used it to read about or discuss religion.

Only 15 per cent of respondents said they used it to follow politics in the Middle East.

Many of those surveyed said they had freedom when using the internet, with 79 per cent saying they could express opinions without fear of retribution, while 69 per cent said they had used it to interact with people who it would not be socially acceptable to talk to otherwise.

Mr Healy said that another of the survey’s findings – that rigid social structures and a perceived inability to improve one’s lot in life – could pose a security threat in the region.

“If you think of the kind of frustration that could create in someone who did have the desire to change their social standing, that could translate to a security threat,” Mr Healy said.

“How many of those people would turn their frustration into action against the state is the big question.”

 
Adnoc cutting supply from oil fields

ABU DHABI - OCT 29: Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) today told customers it will cut crude oil deliveries from several major oilfields as the UAE moved to comply with a reduced Opec oil-production ceiling.

On Friday, the group of oil exporting nations agreed at an emergency meeting in Vienna to cut its members’ production quotas by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) – about five per cent – in a move to stabilise oil markets. Under the agreement, which takes effect from Saturday, the UAE would cut its crude output by 134,000 bpd.

Providing the first evidence of member compliance with the new Opec quotas, Adnoc said it would cut its contracted volumes for crude production from the offshore Upper Zakum field by five per cent in November and December. The company said it would also reduce December supplies of Murban crude to its customers by 15 per cent, of Lower Zakum crude by 10 per cent, and of crude from the Umm Shaif field by five per cent.

The major Opec oil producer, Saudi Arabia, today affirmed its government’s desire for a stable oil market. As reported by the Saudi Press Agency, its Cabinet emphasised during a meeting the kingdom’s desire to avoid “extreme swings” in crude prices and to balance the interests of oil producers and consumers.

But so far, Opec’s first quota reductions since 2006 have failed to halt crude’s breathtaking slump to about $64 a barrel from the record peak of $147.27 in July. Analysts have placed part of the blame for that on Opec’s failure to enforce previous production cuts announced during periods of falling oil prices.

“Opec has difficulty managing markets in cyclical downturns,” Guy Caruso, the US Energy Information Agency chief, said today at a conference in London. He said he did not yet know whether Opec’s announced cut would be sufficient to stem the recent price decline.

The Opec secretary general, Abdalla el Badri, said today the group would call another emergency meeting if crude prices continued sliding. Its next scheduled meeting is on Dec 17 in Algeria.

US crude touched a 17-month low of $61.30 on Monday, before recovering today to above $64 a barrel. The steep price slide has caused Opec and its traditional counterweight, the International Energy Agency (IEA), to raise strikingly similar concerns about world oil supplies.

The IEA, which represents the interests of 28 industrialised oil consuming countries, warned today that restricted investment in oil production due to falling crude prices could cause a supply shortfall.

“Supply will become very tight again in the next several years,” the agency’s president, Nobuo Tanaka, told Reuters on the sidelines of the London conference. “We may see lots of impact on small upstream projects. There have been some talks that big projects may also get delayed. We are concerned about it.”

IEA warnings about low oil prices are rare. Barely a week ago, Mr Tanaka asked Opec not to cut production, arguing that such action could exacerbate the global economic downturn. However, the continued weakening of crude markets now has the IEA worried that prices could fall below levels needed to maintain sufficient world oil supplies in coming years.

“We have seen this financial crisis. The supply side, as well as the demand side, has been hit badly,” Mr Tanaka said.

On Friday, following its decision to cut quotas, Opec said the oil price collapse was jeopardising oil projects and could cause “a medium-term supply shortage”.

Nonetheless, some positive signs concerning energy investment surfaced today: the Qatari oil minister, Abdullah al Attiyah, said billions of dollars of energy projects under construction in the Gulf state were not under threat at current oil prices; and Tony Hayward, the chief executive of Britain’s largest oil company, BP, said the company was “making good” on an earlier promise to boost production. “We are well placed to weather the prevailing financial storm and to benefit from the business opportunities that may well arise from a downturn,” he said.

BP today posted net income of US$8.05 billion (Dh29.54bn) for the third quarter, up 83 per cent from $4.41bn a year earlier.

In the short term, concerns about compliance with the reduced Opec production ceiling are likely to persist, given that the 56 per cent decline in crude prices since July is eroding the budget surpluses of Gulf states and threatening to slow or even derail the region’s economic boom.

Still, the UAE’s economy would continue to expand even if oil prices fell to $40 a barrel, Michael Tomalin, the chief executive of National Bank of Abu Dhabi, said today, addressing a sales meeting in London.

“There is some way to go for oil before it has an impact on the economy,” Hareb al Darmaki, the executive director of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund, told the same meeting.