NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Hunt continues for illegal dwellings
ABU DHABI - FEB. 11: In a relatively new city high-rise, a basement electrical control room doubles as a storeroom and home to an Indian man.
Four gas ovens obstruct the path into the converted room, while a pair of chandeliers are propped up against the side of a large grey control panel. It is, an inspector said, the perfect example of what Abu Dhabi Municipality faces in its campaign against building law violations.
He had just roused the Indian resident, a 40-year-old watchman who was sleeping before his shift began at a central Abu Dhabi building.
There is no ventilation and the potential for electrical fire is too great to allow anyone to live there. This week, the building’s owners were warned that the basement must not be used for accommodation.
For more than a week, municipal officials have joined representatives of the police, the Ministry of Labour, the Department of Civil Defence and other agencies on a tour of inspection across the island.
They have scoured neighbourhoods, looking for indications that dwellings have been altered or additions made without permission. While each department conducts year-round inspections, this campaign has brought all of the relevant authorities together.
The campaign to rid the capital of illegally altered dwellings started this month and was extended by a couple of days. There are plans to cover mainland areas of Abu Dhabi later.
During the campaign, each inspector was allocated an area to cover, armed with a map detailing each plot in that sector. When they detected a violation, they issued a warning to the owner of the building.
Owners who were warned were given two days to come to the municipality to request more time to remove additions, or to start the process to have them approved.
On Monday, the last day of the co-ordinated campaign, The National accompanied inspectors on their final searches of two neighbourhoods. Walking through the quiet streets in Al Muroor, most people would not notice anything suspect about the rows of villas. But the inspectors point out plywood additions on the roofs and along the sides of at least three villas on one street alone.
“These are clearly illegal as no one would have approved this addition,” said Juma al Hajeri, the municipality’s co-ordinator for the campaign.
Standing on the side of the road, Ahmed al Dhalei, an inspector with the Zafarana municipal office, perused a map of the area and consulted with the other inspectors.
“In this area we found many partitions and people who make additional rooms without approval,” he said.
“Somebody even made a bathroom outside and rooms in the garden. After approval it is no problem, but we want everybody to be safe.”
The inspectors are not responsible for evictions. Only the municipal court can order people out of the villas so unapproved modifications can be dismantled.
Some tenants have been victims of building-law violators after their shared accommodations were deemed illegal.
Mr al Hajeri said prospective tenants could ask municipal offices whether a building has been approved.
The convoy of municipality vehicles moved on to the bustling Tourist Club area, where people are packed tightly into high-rise apartment buildings.
Bassam Meshal, another municipality inspector, gestured towards the roof of one building, a makeshift dwelling perched precariously on top. “This is a violation,” he said. “We have had cases where extra rooms are built on top and balconies that are closed to make an extra room.”
Mohammed al Harthi, a Civil Defence inspector, went to check on a decrepit building nearby, where only a few families remained. “This building cannot be maintained. There are too many problems,” Mr al Harthi said, pointing towards a broken fire alarm as an example.
“If you are an owner of a building you should be like the captain of a ship and look after your people.”
Indian charities reach out to expats
DUBAI - FEB. 11: Charities serving the Indian community say they are getting more, and increasingly desperate, calls for help.
Many of the pleas are coming from families who have had one or both breadwinners made reduntant and are unable to repay loans. Groups that mostly worked with low-income workers are now also getting calls from middle-class families and the self-employed.
“We are inundated with calls and e-mails all asking for help and counselling,” said CP Mathew, co-founder of Valley of Love, a non-profit organisation that mostly works with labourers from India.
“Now, it is not uncommon to hear from higher-income groups of diverse nationalities, including the management cadre, who are being threatened with jail terms for not being able to pay their outstanding loans on house rent, cars and credit cards.
“Meanwhile labourers have no time to call and find out about adequate compensation for being laid off. Many are being packed off quietly in a matter of a few hours.”
The Indian consul general in Dubai said there were no figures available on how many Indians were being made redundant or being sent home. “There are all kinds of reports coming out but we are closely monitoring the situation,” he said.
Mr Mathew said that last year his charity would generally try to help two or three people who had ended up in hospital, usually labourers involved in workplace or road accidents. They would also receive about three queries a day from people seeking information or help on returning home.
Since December, however, he said it was helping more people leave the UAE, although he did not give any figures. He added that every day it was handling five or six “family cases”, where one or both members of the family had been made redundant.
“After being made redundant, the victim barely has time to breathe before banks and landlords encash their cheques to ensure [against] criminal cases,” he said. “There is a failure of the system to support bankruptcy.”
He added: “People often call us and they will ask for money.
“We are a [non-governmental organisation] and we don’t have the resources to offer them outright money. We listen to them and see what we can do, whether it is mediation between them and the bank or landlord, or hospitalisation. What we can do is this: when we go as an organisation to talk to a bank or landlord, they are much more amenable but [we] cannot bail someone out of debt.”
If the head of the family lands in the jail, the other members suffer as well. Often, the children are forced to drop out of school because the fees cannot be paid. Such families also often have to contend with water and power cuts and eviction notices. Those who are made redundant are often reluctant to let their banks know they have lost their jobs and are unable to repay their loans for fear of being reported to police.
They are often unaware that some banks automatically provide lenders with insurance that covers the loss of a job. Armed with a termination letter, their insurance payments can be activated to pay off some of their loans.
Moreover, some of those who have been jailed for non-payment of loans will have difficulty getting a new job upon their release since their passports are usually held by the authorities.
“Is it a wonder that former law-abiding people prefer to avoid making that call to the landlord or bank to hold back the cheque, while they skip town?” said Mr Mathew. “There is no single-point solution.”
Those who return home find little support there either. Unlike most western countries, India has no social security system or employment insurance to support people who have been made redundant.
The problem has been exacerbated by the fact that, while many families used to try to amass savings, the widepsread distribution of credit cards in recent years has led to many more people taking on large amounts of personal debt.
Vayalar Ravi, the minister for overseas Indian affairs, said on Monday that the ministry was planning to approach the prime minister with a plan to help those who return home after losing their jobs overseas.
“We are thinking of a way to help affected people,” he said. “I will be approaching the prime minister with this suggestion.”
He confirmed that Gulf companies were hiring less Indians than before.
Charities have suggested the Indian government set up call centres in consulates and embassies to offer counselling and job placement programmes to those who want to return home.
They have also suggested that the government make special loans available so people can meet basic payments, such as for school fees.
Tanker blaze extinguished and crew safe
DUBAI - FEB. 11: A tanker burst into flames on Tuesday after colliding with a container ship in a shipping channel off the coast of Dubai.
Two of the tanker’s crew who were pulled from the water suffered minor injuries but no one died, said Sarah Lockie, a spokeswoman for Dubai-based port operator DP World.
The blaze has been extinguished. The inbound tanker struck a "feeder vessel," a ship that shuttles cargo containers from big ports to smaller ones, about eight kilometres from the Jebel Ali Port, Ms Lockie said. She said the tanker was carrying a liquid used to make plastic.
Details about damage to the ships were not immediately available. However, photos of the burning tanker taken by a sightseeing plane show what looks like substantial damage on the port, or left, side of the tanker.
Fire extended from the waterline to above the top of the tanker as thick black smoke billowed hundreds of feet in the air out of a gash in the ship’s hull, said witness Cameron Leslie, a pilot and director of flight operations at Seawings air charter service in Dubai.
What looked like "viscous material" pouring from the ship also burned on top of the water, as did two other chunks of wreckage about a half mile away, he said. "To me, it looked horrific. ... It must’ve been a pretty intense fire," Mr Leslie said. "I wouldn’t have wanted to have been on deck, mate."
Mr Leslie said the container ship was also on fire. Police helicopters and boats along with the Emirates Coast Guard and the port’s emergency response division assisted in the rescue efforts, officials said.
Ms Lockie said the ships involved in the accident have been removed from the shipping channel, where traffic has returned to normal.
The Maltese-flagged tanker, Kashmir, was carrying about 30,000 tons of oil condensate, according to Stephen Olley of the Lloyd’s Marine Intelligence Unit in Britain. It was headed from Iran to the UAE.
Emirates state news agency WAM identified the container ship as the Sima Saba. However, Jim Wilson of shipping magazine Fairplay said the ship was the Sima Saman, a Singapore-flagged vessel owned by Dubai-based company Simatech Shipping. Simatech could not be reached for comment.
The ship’s destination was not known. Jebel Ali is located on the southwestern end of Dubai and is the bigger of two major ports in the city. It is run by DP World, the world’s fourth-biggest port operator, which is 80 per cent owned by the government of Dubai.
Payment for minibus victims’ families
DUBAI - FEB. 11: The company whose minibus was involved in a fatal crash this week near Jebel Ali promised yesterday to compensate the families of its dead workers.
The firm, Al Hai and Al Mukaddam For Geotechnical Works, also said a fourth employee had died of injuries at Rashid Hospital. Ten workers were critically hurt in the accident on Monday morning.
“Compensation is happening,” said Basel Mukaddam, one of the company’s managing directors. He added: “One more of our employees died on Tuesday morning, and we are in touch with their relatives.”
Rashid hospital confirmed the man had died of trauma injuries.
Mr Mukaddam also said six of the other employees involved in the crash had undergone surgery at the hospital and were all in intensive care.
According to police, the accident occurred when a 4x4 suddenly shifted lanes on Jebel Ali Lhbab Road and hit the minibus. The workers’ vehicle overturned, crashed into a metal barrier and landed in another lane heading in the opposite direction. Several of the workers were thrown out of the vehicle on to the road.
Two were pronounced dead at the scene, and a third at the hospital. Of the injured, seven were listed as extremely critical and suffering from brain injuries, while the others were in serious but stable conditions. Only one was well enough to be discharged on Monday.
Mr Mukaddam said police were still investigating the accident: “We are waiting for the police to finish their investigation, and they have not yet released anything.”
He added that the minibus, which was rented, was “perfectly safe and continually serviced”.
The driver of the 4x4 was detained by police.
Doctors at the hospital had expressed surprise that so many of the workers suffered from head trauma resulting in brain damage, and suggested that this was because minibuses offer far less protection in an accident than other kinds of vehicles.
Police said they believed the minibus adhered to international safety standards.
Minibuses are used to transport tens of thousands of labourers to construction sites around the country daily.
Life term for man who stabbed his roommate
ABU DHABI - FEB. 11: An Indian man who stabbed his sleeping roommate and left him to die, then bragged about it to guests, was sentenced to life in prison yesterday.
SB, 28, had not paid rent for a home he shared with a man identified as MK for several months, and his roommate had threatened to evict him, the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department said in a statement.
On the day of the murder, SB invited four friends out to lunch and to spend the night at his home.
That night he waited until everyone in the home was asleep and stabbed MK in the stomach with a knife, leaving him to bleed to death.
SB then walked out of the room with the bloodied knife and bragged about his actions to his guests, who called the police.
He later confessed to killing his roommate for threatening to remove him from the household. SB had pleaded guilty to premeditated murder before the Criminal Court of First Instance.
His four guests testified against him. The Judicial Department would not provide more details.