NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Funeral in France for ‘poisoning’ children
DUBAI - JUNE 25: The parents of two children who died of suspected food poisoning are preparing to take their bodies back to France, where their funeral is to be held.
Dubai Police have released the bodies of Nathan and Chelsea D’Souza, aged five and seven, following postmortem examinations. They died hours after eating food ordered from a Chinese restaurant in the Al Qusais area.
Last week Dubai Municipality handed the case to the public prosecution to investigate. The family will are expected to accompany the bodies to France in a day or two, as soon as the necessary paperwork is completed.
The prosecution has sent samples of food and tissue to laboratories outside the UAE for further tests.
CHELSEA & NATHAN
Prosecutors also ordered autopsies on the two bodies. Dubai Advocate General, Khalifa Rashid bin Deemas, said on Monday that they had been ordered “due to the lack of the medical reason of death”.
The two children, their mother and a housemaid fell ill after eating a takeaway meal from the restaurant on June 12, a Friday.
The family rushed to the nearby NMC hospital where they were treated and later released.
Nathan was taken to the hospital again on Saturday morning after his condition worsened but was reported to be dead on arrival.
Chelsea was soon moved to Dubai Hospital where she was treated but she died on Sunday.
Yesterday the children’s father, Patrick D’Souza, said again that more attention need to be paid to the two hospitals. “The media are speculating on what caused the death and what they ate,” he said. “However, the hospital, the healthcare sector is not being questioned.”
He maintained food poisoning was quite common but death from it was unusual.
A spokesperson for the Dubai Health Authority, which oversees both hospitals named in the case, would not comment. when contacted yesterday.
Mr D’Souza said that the investigations were taking time but he was confident that the Dubai authorities would come out with the facts soon.
Dubai police chief: sponsorship should be scrapped
DUBAI - JUNE 25: The Chief of Dubai Police has called on the Government to abolish the sponsorship system for expatriate workers, describing it as “old” and “outdated”.
“The sponsorship system is a burden on Emiratis who are often the sponsors of workers and the police who have to respond to most disputes and crimes,” said Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim on the sidelines of a police workshop yesterday.
“Employment contracts should be between companies and employees,” he said. The employees “should be responsible for their own actions, paperwork and medical check-ups.”
The sponsorship arrangement serves as the legal basis for residency and employment for more than four million expatriates in the UAE. It is a complex system involving various government departments. Under it, an expatriate cannot change jobs without permission from his or her sponsor.
When asked if the Government was considering abolishing the system, he said: “I am not quite sure if that’s something they are considering, but there is talk and I would back it.”
A senior figure at the Ministry of Labour has said the UAE has no plans to follow the lead of Bahrain, which last month moved to scrap the sponsorship system for certain expatriate workers there.
Instead, he said, the priority was to adjust existing labour laws to accommodate employees who had been made redundant but who wanted to stay in the country and look for work. The official said the UAE was concentrating on improving current policies but would not be scrapping the sponsorship system.
Gen Tamim countered that if the UAE adopted Bahrain’s approach it would see immediate improvements in the labour market, in labour accommodations, in access to health care and in lifestyle.
He said that scrapping the present system would allow companies to pay a higher fixed salary, giving workers the freedom to choose where they wanted to live and improving job-market flexibility.
“Emiratis would be better off if they didn’t have to be sponsors, worry about other people and do their paperwork,” he said. Scrapping the system would lead to fewer labour violations and would have reduced the number of them during the economic downturn, he argued.
“Since the improvement in the economy we have seen a lot less labour violations,” he said.
“People are generally more aware of their rights and companies are breaking the law less frequently, but now is the time to consider other options.”
He urged workers who experience labour violations to report their employer and not to stage violent protests.
“People can protest, like anywhere in the world people have the right to protest, but what we cannot allow is violence. Everything can be resolved peacefully,” he said.
In Bahrain, Majeed Alawi, the labour minister, recently announced that his country had activated a clause in the Labour Market Regulatory Authority to scrap the sponsorship system, making it the first country in the GCC to do so.
But the decision has been staunchly resisted by the business community and the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The former UAE Deputy Minister of Labour, Khalid al Khazraji, said that abolishing the system would be difficult in the Emirates. During his tenure, he said, the issue had never been discussed.
“There is absolutely no need to abolish the sponsorship system because so many government departments and external organisations are tied to it,” said Dr Khazraji, who was also the director general of Tanmia, the body charged with empowering more Emiratis to work in the private sector.
UN: UAE is a transit point for drugs
NEW YORK - JUNE 25: Criminals are increasingly using the UAE as a market and a trafficking point for illegal narcotics, according to a UN report released yesterday.
The World Drug Report 2009, compiled by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, says smuggling of amphetamines and heroin through the Emirates has continued to grow.
The findings mirror figures released by the anti-narcotics unit of Dubai Police, which has seized 41 per cent more drugs between January and May this year than in the same period last year.
The UNODC director, Antonio Maria Costa, said Dubai’s busy ports offered gangs alternative supply routes with less stringent customs checks.
“Drug trafficking today has become a global business,” Mr Costa said. “Even if the main markets are still North America and Europe, criminals can go through other areas where there is the least risk of being arrested with the least controls.
“The logic today is not to send drugs from Colombia to Spain – it is too dangerous. Everybody would be waiting for containers to arrive and inspect them thoroughly. Instead, it is sent through other ports and disguised with Chinese tea or cashew nuts from Ivory Coast.”
A report issued by the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board last year, which made similar conclusions to the UNODC report, was recently criticised by a senior Dubai Customs official for being conducted with “minimal communication” with local authorities.
The Vienna-based agency’s 314-page report says Dubai is emerging as a new transit point for opiates passing from Afghanistan, through Pakistan and onwards to destinations such as China and Malaysia.
Researchers also highlight “dramatic increases” in seizures of fake Captagon pills, commonly an addictive mixture of stimulants such as fenethylline and caffeine that can induce paranoia.
Growing drug use in the UAE and other Gulf countries stemmed from the increasingly affluent middle class combined with an influx of illegal immigrants looking to make cash through crime, Mr Costa said.
Customs officials said yesterday that they had arrested the second person this month apparently trying to smuggle heroin into Dubai in capsules in their gut.