NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Single card for residents next year
UAE - OCT 13: Residency permits, labour cards and the national ID will be merged into one card – and a single application process – from next July.
“There are too many hurdles for people to go through when they come and settle in the country,” Dr Ali al Khouri, the acting director of the Emirates Identity Authority said yesterday. “This new process will consolidate three major steps into one.”
Those steps are overseen by the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Labour and the authority.
Each ministry will still be responsible for approving applications in its area, but the application process will be overseen entirely by the authority.
“Each of these require their own application forms,” said Dr al Khouri. “So you have to fill three forms and three different payments. That’s too much.”
Currently, those processes require trips to several different offices around the city. Under the new system, however, applicants will go to one of the authority’s offices and fill out a single form.
After medical tests at Sheikh Khalifa Medical Centre, they would return to the original office and be assigned a date to return to pick up their unified card.
“You will be given an appointment for when to come back and pick up your card. Our goal is reduce this time to 15 minutes,” said Dr al Khouri.
“We will start with newcomers as it is more practical. They will be required to fill one application form and make one payment. So when they go to the preventive medicine [at Sheikh Khalifa Medical Centre] to get tested, they will have their fingerprints taken, iris scan and facial biometrics.”
For those who already hold national ID cards, no additional action will be needed, Dr al Khouri said.
Those cards will be linked to residency and labour permits, although he could not provide a specific date for that integration.
The existing offices for obtaining the national ID card – there are 20 nationwide – will be able to scan all submitted documents and transmit the data to a separate office that will check all the information against a Ministry of Interior database, he said.
Those entering the country will also have their irises scanned at airports and border crossings.
Besides streamlining the process for residents, the new processes will also play an important role for the Government, he said.
Officials also believe that consolidating all the information into a unified database will help in solving and preventing crime, as well as help authorities plan public services.
The database will be accessible to the Ministry of Interior and police, the Ministry of Labour and the Emirates Identity Authority.
“This has more to do with serving the public. A major part of serving the public is also protecting them,” Dr al Khouri said.
“Once a national database is complete we will make better decisions, offer better services and customise our planning.”
The recently announced national DNA database, which is scheduled to be deployed within a year by the Ministry of Interior for fighting crime, would not have much impact on the national ID system, Dr al Khouri said.
“We have explored the issue of consolidating the DNA database with the national ID, but we agreed that at this stage we will not be doing that. The vision is to have one prime database.”
The gathering of such information about individuals has raised privacy issues and illustrated the differing views among the different nationalities here.
“There is a huge debate about privacy. People were asking, ‘Why do we need another card?’ We already have passports, but passports are a travel document.
“We need to come to terms that a national ID is a part of the Government’s strategy to offer better services and safeguard the public.”
When the card was first introduced, Dr al Khouri said, it was not popular.
“I will admit that we did not market the card properly at the outset. So now we are wanting to market it in such a way that shows how beneficial it is for people to have.”
Although Dr al Khouri has declined to give any figures on how many expatriates and nationals have registered for the card to date, he said: “There is great progress, I will say that. Instead of forcing people to get the card we are now marketing what it can do.”
Last week, Dr al Khouri represented the country at the FutureGov 2009 Summit in Bali, where the national ID programme was recognised as one of the top five government projects in Asia.
Fire guts shops and warehouses
SHARJAH - OCT 13: Fire gutted five shops and three electronics warehouses in an industrial area yesterday morning, destroying merchandise worth millions of dirhams.
No injuries were reported in the incident.
The fire, which began at about 7.30am, may have been sparked by an electrical short circuit in an electronics shop, according to Col Rashid Marwan Buafra, the Sharjah Civil Defence official supervising the fire-fighting.
He cautioned, however, that investigators needed to complete their work before the cause could be known with certainty. Most of the gutted shops sold home appliances and consumer electronics. One shop housed a printing press.
Col Buafra, who said firemen arrived in less than five minutes, attributed the significant losses in the four-hour blaze to the high density of storage within a small area.
Asad al Ikhtiyal estimated that he lost goods worth Dh10 million (US$2.7m) in his home appliance shop, Electroline.
Mr al Ikhtiyal, 50, from Lebanon, said he had operated the shop for two decades. He declined to say whether the business was insured. “I lost everything, that’s all; [I] am a poor man like any other,” he said.
Police cordoned off the area around the fire and closed several roads, slowing traffic in the area to a snail’s pace.
Abdul Saleem Antuire, 40, an Indian who works as a watchman at the store Best Buys, said he woke up to the sound of explosions – possibly detonating gas cylinders – in a nearby shop and ran from his quarters. The fire swept through the building where he had been sleeping.
“I did not think of carrying anything from my room,” Mr Antuire said. “All I wanted was my life. I feel relieved that I managed to survive.”
Abdul Aziz Mohammed, the owner of Best Buys, said two of his warehouses were gutted but that firemen saved the shop he has operated for 25 years.
“I have lost about Dh2 million,” he said.
Guards stay at home over wage demands
Dubai - OCT 13: Scores of security guards failed to show up for work yesterday, complaining that they are not being paid the Dh2,000 minimum monthly wage decreed by the Ministry of Interior.
Guards from Al Jaber Coin Security staged a small demonstration at their labour camp in Sonapur, demanding the minimum wage, which is being paid to colleagues in other emirates. Their employer says the new rule is not yet applicable in Dubai.
Guards claimed about 500 of their colleagues joined the demonstration. However a company representative said only 66 did not report for work.
The security guards protect several Dubai Municipality and Dubai Health Authority installations and other private establishments such as stores and offices.
They earn about Dh1,100 (US$300) a month while their colleagues in Abu Dhabi, doing the same job, make about Dh3,400.
“We want an increase of salary because the law gives us this right,” one of the guards in Dubai said.
A company representative said the demands were unlawful. If the guards did not report for work they would be considered to be in breach of their contracts, he said.
“The salary amount was agreed upon in the contract, so to demand an increase in salaries is actually like breaking the contract,” he said.
“The management increased the salaries of the security guards in Abu Dhabi because the rules there stipulated the increase while the rules in Dubai are different.”
About 300 of the company’s 3,000 security guards are employed in Dubai, he said.
Yesterday’s labour action was the first of its kind in the country. Security guards are the only category of expatriate worker who are covered by a legally mandated minimum wage.
In January, the Ministry of Interior announced that expatriate security guards would have to earn at least Dh2,000 a month and Emirati ones Dh6,000 as part of a new accreditation scheme for private security companies.
That announcement was the result of a 2006 ministerial decree stipulating that companies that fail to adhere to the new regulations can be penalised.
The rule came into force on July 1 and while many security guards in Abu Dhabi and the northern Emirates reportedly received salary increases, their counterparts in Dubai are still waiting for what they say is a much-needed raise.
“This is discrimination,” said one guard, who works at the Dubai Health Authority, at the demonstration yesterday.
“We are carrying out the same duties and we work for the same company but we are still paid much less.”
Other security companies confirmed they also had not given their Dubai staff a salary increase.
“We have been in contact with Dubai Police at several occasions and they have said that they have not yet applied the rule and so we are not in violation with the law if we do not increase,” said a representative from one Dubai-based security company who asked that he not be named.
“We cannot ask our clients to increase the agreed payments if there is no law to increase salaries and we cannot afford to increase the salaries with the current budgets.”
Other security guards in Dubai are understood to be frustrated with the situation, although they expressed reservations about taking similar action.
“I know that there is a federal law stipulating a minimum wage of Dh2,000,” said one security guard who earns about Dh800 a month, “but at the same time the management tells us that the rule is not applicable in Dubai. We need to know what exactly is the rule. Nobody seems to know.”
The guards from Al Jaber Coin Security said they would continue their protest until their demands were met.
The Ministry of Interior and Dubai Police were not available for comment.
Capital centre will protect dugong
ABU DHABI - OCT 13: It is the cow of the sea: almost half a tonne of slow-moving mammal, a defenceless giant that spends its life feeding ponderously on seagrass.
And although its numbers are now much depleted, some 7,000 endangered dugongs still roam the waters of the Arabian Gulf. The only place there are more is off the northern shores of Australia.
Now Abu Dhabi plans to set up a new regional wildlife centre to protect the remaining population.
An agreement between the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi (EAD) means an office dedicated to the conservation of dugongs, as well as the region’s native migratory birds of prey, will open in the capital.
It will be the only one of its kind to focus on these species, Elizabeth Mrema, the UNEP’s officer-in-charge, said yesterday, after signing a donor agreement with the agency.
“Whether we intend to establish other offices, I think we’ll avoid that particularly if the other offices are to protect the same species,” Ms Mrema said.
“That is a privilege of the Government of Abu Dhabi to play that key role.”
From now until 2011, the outpost will preside over more than 47 member countries that have adopted memoranda of understanding on protecting dugongs.
The unit, which will operate independent of the EAD but within its premises, will also monitor the actions of 104 member states that have agreed to act to protect migratory birds in Africa and Eurasia.
“By agreeing to host and fund this office, we are elevating our posture as an environmentally aware country that is very conscious of its role in conservation. Not only regionally but also globally,” said Thabit al Abdessalaam, the agency’s marine director in biodiversity management.
He also suggested that having the outpost for the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) within the building would improve local marine and wildlife research.
“It provides us with an avenue of co-ordination with other countries, which would enhance our own efforts to serve and protect dugong and the birds of prey – sharing research, sharing information,” he said.
“Their presence here would very much simplify us getting readily available information and ... give us the opportunity to tap into a lot of expertise from CMS and UNEP in terms of biology and conservation.”
Majid al Mansouri, the secretary general of the EAD, said the centre was a natural fit for Abu Dhabi, as the presence of dugongs in the Arabian Gulf has long been intertwined with the country’s marine heritage.
Traditionally, the mammals, which can grow to about three metres long and weigh as much as 400kg,– were hunted for their red meat and oil.
Today, they are protected by federal law from being exploited and sold.
The 4,200 sq km Marawah islands reserve is the largest protected area in the Gulf and is a sanctuary for more than half of the region’s dugongs.
Ms Mrema agreed that Abu Dhabi was a fitting place to set up shop. She said the geographical advantages of setting up the CMS base in Abu Dhabi was that many “range states” would be under its purview. “When we deal with international issues, we’re looking at the bigger picture.”
The new unit will initially be staffed by six people from the CMS, including two programme officers.
One officer will focus on ensuring that countries that have signed up to the dugong memorandum are making the strides to protect the animals; the other will play the same role for birds of prey.
The UAE boasts roughly 440 species of birds, including migratory birds of prey.
“We have on average 100-plus birds which regularly breed here and the rest are largely migratory – sea birds and gulls, including flamingos,” said Dr Salim Javed, the deputy manager of bird conservation at the EAD.
In April, a colony of 18,000 greater flamingos was discovered near the Musaffah Channel.
While the CMS base will not be predominately research-orientated, Dr Javed said its conservation efforts would be closely watched in the region.
“It’s obligatory for the countries that signed this agreement to implement the action plan,” he said. “This unit in Abu Dhabi will make sure those action plans are implemented.”