NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Three in four fail Dubai driving test
DUBAI - FEB. 15: More than three quarters of 196,000 applicants failed their driving tests last year in Dubai, a report by the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) shows. The failure rate is up sharply from 2005, when half of the applicants passed.
The failure rate may be explained, in part, by the efforts of RTA, in consultation with the police and driving schools, to raise the standard of instruction and examination. In the last three years, for example, it has closed 40 small driving schools whose level of teaching was deemed inadequate.
Building on that progress, the authority is considering a number of initiatives for the coming year, including a rehabilitation programme for drivers who have had their licences suspended after accumulating 24 black points, and special beginner training sessions for driving at night.
“This is a very big year for the licensing agency,” said Peyman Younes Parham, the director of marketing and corporate communication at the RTA. “You will hear many important announcements in the months to come.”
Since 2007, the RTA has been working with VicRoads, a government agency in the Australian state of Victoria, on changes to the licensing system intended to lift teaching standards and the qualifications of instructors and examiners.
VicRoads has already trained 32 driving instructors on the appropriate methods of delivering information to trainees, on the correct application of driving and traffic rules and on educational methods of safe and defensive driving.
Later this year, a VicRoads manual is to be handed to all instructors to ensure uniformity in the way driving rules are taught. Examiners are also being trained.
The RTA said it may increase the time allotted for testing drivers by 10 to 15 minutes from around 10 minutes at present “to enable the examiner to assess the level of the trainee in a fair manner and ascertain the trainee’s skills in professional driving”.
It may also provide training to disabled people who want to obtain driving licences.
A number of programmes are targeted at novice drivers, who are several times more likely to get involved in serious accidents compared with their more experienced counterparts.
One idea is to issue all novices who pass the test with temporary permits for an initial period of three years. Another is the course in night driving.
Although the RTA report showed that driver discipline still appeared to be a major problem in Dubai, as it is in other parts of the country, there were noticeable signs of improvement.
Road fatalities are decreasing, the RTA said. While 24 out of every 100,000 people were road-accident victims in 2005, the figure is 17 per 100,000 today.
Meanwhile, applicants face continuing frustration as they get behind the steering wheel for their tests.
Denitsa Godeva, 29, from Bulgaria, took the test in November. The owner of a licence issued in her home country, she is still not sure why she failed.
“I think it is because I did not check the mirrors often enough, and maybe I joined a main road too abruptly on one occasion,” Ms Godeva said. “But the examiner never explained.
“I was given a sheet of paper with Arabic text next to some boxes, some of which were ticked off.
“She did not give me an explanation; she said to take the paper to the instructor and ask her. If this was Bulgaria, 90 per cent of the people standing for the exam would have passed.”
Ms Godeva said she saw a woman who was taking the exam for the 14th time.
“I do not know why so few people pass,’’ she said. “I think they do it on purpose, maybe to reduce traffic congestion or because the driving is so bad here.”
A 28-year old Indian financial controller for a multinational company said he probably failed because of a misunderstanding.
“I was driving for about nine or 10 minutes and the instructor asked me to park the car,’’ he said. “I could not see a parking spot nearby and asked where I should stop, if he wanted to me stop by the side of the street.
“Maybe it is a mistake from my side; I should not have asked.”
The man asked to remain anonymous as another exam is pending within days.
Fraud leads to cut in dental insurance
ABU DHABI - FEB 15: Dentists are prescribing unnecessary treatment and claiming money from insurers for procedures they did not perform.
The Health Authority-Abu Dhabi (HAAD) last week announced the large numbers of violations by dentists led to it dropping full dental insurance cover for Emiratis at private centres.
Beginning today, Emiratis will have to pay 50 per cent of dental costs under the Thiqa programme, which has 500,000 members, unless they are treated at public hospitals or clinics.
An investigation by The National revealed huge discrepancies in treatments recommended to patients by private dentists in the capital.
A reporter who visited three clinics was told by one dentist he only needed his teeth cleaned at a cost of Dh300, while another advised him to replace a crown and 14 fillings at a total cost of Dh41,010 (US$11,165).
The health authority did not respond to questions about the discrepancies. Dr Jad Aoun, the director of third-party administration at the national insurance company Daman, said the wide variety of treatments that dentists could provide gave them more opportunity to defraud the system.
“With dental care, we can never know whether the patient really requires the treatment since we cannot examine the mouth of each patient,” Dr Aoun said.
“In planned treatments it is left to the discretion of the dentist and the choice of the patient. There are lots of options.”
Dr Aoun said Daman had become aware of certain dentists recommending the most costly treatments, some of which might not be necessary. When an insurance company is covering treatment costs, some dentists see fit to “inflate the bill”, he said.
Another of the biggest problems dental insurers face is the muddied distinction between cosmetic and necessary treatments.
“You cannot have a system where you can control cosmetic procedures,” Dr Aoun said. “It is uncontrollable. In some instances of orthodontics, you cannot draw a clear line between a cosmetic and necessary procedure.
“Also, a dentist may recommend a very costly treatment when the much cheaper one would actually be better, just to boost their income.”
Insurers are reluctant to provide large sums for dental work because of the discretion dentists have in determining treatments.
Under Daman’s Global Plan, its most comprehensive policy, there is a maximum yearly limit of Dh5,000. Daman will cover 80 per cent of the cost but every non-emergency treatment must be authorised in advance.
X-rays, extractions, composite fillings, root canal treatments and prescribed drugs for all these treatments are the only things the company will cover.
The same rules apply for the UAE Plan, but the annual limit is Dh2,500.
Dr Aoun said Daman had noticed a number of different ways Thiqa and other insurance schemes were being defrauded by dentists.
“Patients know they have coverage for limited services, so if they wanted a cosmetic procedure like teeth whitening, they ask the dentist to send a pre-authorisation or a bill request to us for something we do cover, which totals the price of the whitening,” he said. “We agree and then the dentist gets paid for whitening the teeth.”
Each time a dentist seeks pre-authorisation from Daman they must include the procedure on a map of the teeth, marking exactly where the work needs to be done.
Daman checks these maps to look for any discrepancies, such as a treatment request for a filling a tooth that had earlier been authorised to be pulled.
“We are getting more and more dental expertise within Daman to check for things such as this,” Dr Aoun said. “In the beginning we said ‘no’ to dentists applying to work in Daman, but now we are using them more and more.”
Daman performs spot checks in private hospitals and is expanding them to more private dental clinics. If it finds evidence that a dentist has been committing fraud, it can drop the clinic from its network.
That would mean the clinic could ultimately lose Daman clients.
“We need to find a balance between control and trust,” Dr Aoun said.
“We are not judging all dentists on the behaviour of just a few. We also do not want the provider to lose money, but we need to get rid of the perception that lying to an insurance company is not a serious matter. It is.”
Credit card links Tamim suspect to murder weapon
CAIRO/DUBAI - FEB. 15: The suspect in the murder of the Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim was identified through a credit card with which he bought the murder weapon, a court was told yesterday.
Tamim was found dead in her Dubai apartment last July, having been stabbed several times and slashed across the throat.
Col Khalil al Mansouri, the director of Dubai Police’s criminal investigation department, gave evidence before a three-judge panel in Cairo. Col al Mansouri said his officers identified Mohsen el Sokari after he bought a knife, alleged to have been the murder weapon, with his credit card.
Mr el Sokari is also alleged to have used the card to buy Nike trousers and shoes that were left on the 21st floor of Tamim’s Jumeirah Beach Residence building, the floor below her flat, on July 28 last year.
Pictures from a security camera in the building allegedly showed Mr el Sokari entering the building that day wearing the clothes.
When found on the 21st floor, they were stained with the victim’s blood.
Mr el Sokari, 39, a former Egyptian police officer, was arrested in early August in Cairo and charged with killing Tamim.
Hisham Talaat Moustafa, 49, a billionaire and a member of Egypt’s ruling party, is accused of hiring Mr el Sokari to kill Tamim, his estranged lover, for $2million (Dh7.35m).
He has been in custody since early September.
Also yesterday, the presiding judge, Al Mohammadi Qunsua, said the court had received testimony from Tamim’s parents and brother, Khalil, via the Lebanese Embassy in Cairo.
They had accused Mr Moustafa of ordering Mr el Sokari to kill the singer. The three also accused Mr Moustafa of “mistreating and threatening” her.
The judge also gave permission to a police officer working with the prosecution to examine Tamim’s mobile phone chip.
He asked that the results be ready by tomorrow, along with a technical report from the Dubai company that installed the surveillance cameras at her building.
The judge adjourned the trial until tomorrow and ordered that the defendants remain in custody.
Two years in the making
ABU DHABI - FEB. 15: The current UAE media law, dating to 1980, includes 26 articles that imply or specifically refer to the imprisonment of journalists.
For that reason it needed to be changed, to reflect developments both in the media and in the country at large, said Ibrahim al Abed, the director general of the National Media Council, the government body that oversees journalists.
“We felt that there were many things in the law that should be changed for the better,” he said in an interview.
The process of changing the law began in 2007, when the council submitted a proposal to the Cabinet. After review by numerous committees, it was endorsed last month by the Federal National Council and awaits presidential approval.
A number of articles in the current law governing what can and cannot be printed were dropped from the revision.
Under the 1980 law, for example, writers who blemish the name of a president of an Arab, Islamic or “friendly” state or affected relations between the UAE and its allies could face up to six months in prison and fines of up to Dh5,000 (US$1,361).
The revised law makes no reference to imprisoning journalists.
“The country has developed a lot,” Mr al Abed said. “The media in the UAE has developed a lot, so these developments should be taken into consideration. The current press law mentions nothing but printed media, another reason it needed to be updated.’’
While the revised law now mentions television and radio, there is still no specific reference to the internet.
Alexander McNabb, author of the blog Fake Plastic Souks (fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com), questions why the draft does not include definitions of online media, the fastest growing media sector.
“As far as I can see,’’ he wrote in his blog, “the law makes no reference to the ‘e-world’ and remains firmly rooted in the idea that ‘the media’ is content produced by licensed entities.
“Where does that leave someone writing a blog, commenting on a forum or posting up to You Tube? It leaves us all relatively unsure of quite where we stand, that’s where.”
Mr al Abed said that internet issues may be addressed in the “executive regulations” that will accompany the new law.
Surfing wiped out at Dubai beach
DUBAI - FEB. 15: Surfing has been banned at Umm Suqeim 2 beach, not only frustrating enthusiasts of the sport but also threatening the future of the city’s only surfing school.
“This new sign went up with this new rule saying there’s no surfing here,” said Scott Chambers, 25, who opened Surf Dubai in 2005.
Shortly after the signs were posted last week, employees of Dubai Municipality took his driver’s licence and fined him for surfing in the swimming-only area.
Mr Chambers said he was assured by members of the Coastal Zone and Waterways Management section of the Municipality that surfing contributed positively to the city. The problem, he was told, was that federal laws prohibited surfing at Umm Suqeim 2 beach and that the municipality did not have the authority to supersede the law.
Ibrahim Mohammed, an engineer at the Coastal Zone, said the restrictions were intended to reduce risks to swimmers. “I don’t like to talk about numbers or statistics, but drowning, things like this, we want to avoid,” he said.
Mr Chambers said his conversation with the Municipality revealed that collisions between swimmers and surfers were among accidents the new ban was meant to reduce.
“In the 15 years I’ve been here I’m not aware of any collisions between surfers and swimmers,” he said. “But there have been over 50 cases of surfers saving swimmers.”
Mr Chambers said he was asked to submit a proposal outlining systems used in other surfing countries to try and reach an agreement whereby swimmers, surfers and other beach-goers could coexist safely.
In the meantime, the future for Surf Dubai school does not look good.
“This is the last beach we have,’’ Mr Chambers said, “because of all the construction here.”