NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL

Software pirates ‘steal’ half a billion dirhams

ABU DHABI - MAY 18: More than a third of commercial computer software in the country is pirated, according to a report which claims the practice cost the industry over half a billion dirhams last year.

The report, the seventh annual study by the Business Software Alliance, a piracy watchdog, and IDC, an IT and telecommunications consultancy, estimated that Dh1.9billion had been lost to piracy since 2005.

It claimed that for every Dh100 of legitimate software sold, another Dh56 worth was pirated – about 36 per cent. This rate had remained virtually unchanged since 2005, when it was 34 per cent, raising concerns that antipiracy strategies were not working.

However, the rate was lower than the global average of 43 per cent, with the country ranking 21st out of 111 in tackling the problem. This put it ahead of all Arab countries.

“[The companies] should focus on the awareness of the consumers and to get them to understand why they are better off with original software,” said Maj Faisal al Shamari, Abu Dhabi Police’s chief information security officer.

Maj al Shamari defended the UAE’s record on piracy, saying that companies were largely to blame.

They indirectly contributed to the problem by carrying out too few corporate social responsibility projects, which contributed to their image as unsympathetic “tycoons”, he said.

The overpricing of software was also a factor.

“We have no taxes here in the UAE, so why are their prices the same as in the US?” asked Maj al Shamari, adding that few companies offered incentives such as student discounts which are common in the West.

Experts said the problem was probably far more acute for the entertainment industry.

This was partly because people could download material from their homes, said Dr Fadi Aloul, the assistant professor of computer engineering at the American University of Sharjah.

“People don’t fear or think much about the piracy issues involved,” he said, adding that no middleman was required.

While figures were unavailable for how many computer games were pirated, Kishan Palija, the managing director of Geekay Games, a retailer based in the UAE, said customers very rarely bought software after buying games consoles such as the Xbox 360.

“Obviously piracy of video games is much higher than software,” he said.

“If you go into the small malls to a small electronics kiosk they will load games on your PlayStation Portable. People are buying the machines and pirating the games.”

Experts were divided on how best to tackle the problem. Most favoured tougher enforcement measures against sellers and organisations that used pirated commercial software, but took a different approach to individual consumers.

One suggestion was to restrict access to websites that promoted piracy.

“[In the UAE] we have a proxy, which has advantages and disadvantages,” said Dr Aloul. “One of the advantages is that it can block the sites that allow illegal downloads.”

Consumers also needed to be educated on the dangers of using pirated software, which is often infected with programmes that can compromise the user’s security, said Lance Spitzner, the president of HoneyTech, an IT security consultancy.

“You want to educate the users on the risks of using pirated software, which is easily infected, can’t be updated and often doesn’t really work,” said Mr Spitzner.

Once people were educated, said Dr Aloul, they would realise that piracy was a “time bomb” on their computers.

Instead of going after the end users, the Government needed to concentrate on the suppliers of pirate programmes and the companies that used them.

“You have to go after the organisations that are most flagrantly doing it. Go after the big fish,” he said.

Massive health policy overhaul to tackle childhood obesity

ABU DHABI - MAY 18 : A massive overhaul of children’s health is being planned in an attempt to reverse the growing trends of childhood obesity and diabetes.

Senior officials from the capital’s health and education authorities admitted that children’s health was “not well served”.

They said attempts to improve the situation had failed, in part because they were too ambitious, rather than setting specific, achievable goals.

The new School Health Strategy will aim to improve nutrition, encourage exercise and stop children taking up smoking. It will also include mandatory screening and vaccination for common diseases, as well as mental and dental health. More than 100 delegates met yesterday to thrash out the details of the programme.

The conference, hosted by Health Authority-Abu Dhabi (HAAD), was the first step to creating a comprehensive strategy, targeting some of the most concerning areas. Dr Salim Adib, the head of public health at HAAD, said: “We can’t ignore that the health of our children is not well served.

“If the situation goes on like this it will be even worse when they are adults. The increased prosperity has brought with it all the secondary effects. We obviously don’t want to roll back prosperity but we want to help children make the right choices, particularly early on.”

Targets include building more school sports facilities and improving existing ones. Officials will also aim to improve the food in school canteens and cafeterias, with calorie allowances for each age group.

The authority plans to introduce individual care plans for children with chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes, and ensure that every school nurse is trained in life support and emergencies.

HAAD said it would enforce strict rules governing foods in schools, and physical education, working with the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) and the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority, .

Dr Mugheer al Khaili, ADEC’s director general, said: “It is a priority for us." He said the authority was working to introduce licensed nurses into the emirate’s 305 public schools. Several pilot programmes were under way and a “new school model” was being prepared for a phased introduction next year, he said.

Although food guidelines for canteens were introduced by the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority last year, officials admitted that they were too “radical” to be successful.

“We try, we fail and we learn,” Dr Adib said. “The guidelines were too extensive, they were inapplicable.”

Canteens were barred from serving food such as felafel, hamburgers and sodas. Instead, they were instructed to offer foods such as fresh fruit, salads, and fish. However, the guidelines did not include calorie counts or sample menus.

Elizabeth Bromfield, the headmistress at Al Shohub Private School for girls, said although vendors were not allowed near the school, pupils found other sources.

“We spend a lot of time talking to students about healthy eating and we try to adhere to all the regulations but there is a great love of junk food type of things, because they’re just kids,” she said. Pupils still bring in banned fizzy drinks and sweets.

The school would contact parents if younger children had unhealthy lunch boxes, she said, but it was much harder to supervise the older children.

As part of the new strategy, all schoolchildren will be screened for common ailments to give officials a better picture of problem areas. Doctors and school nurses will test hearing, sight, oral health, iron levels and spinal curvature.

Dr Jennifer Moore, the head of family and school health at HAAD, said: “Schools are a fundamentally important part of a child’s life but there are many other factors. This strategy needs to look at the family, the home life and the surrounding community.”

Dr Moore said the Global School Health Survey 2005 found just over 12 per cent of adolescents were overweight, and another 25 per cent were at risk of becoming overweight.

Part of the problem is that not all schools in Abu Dhabi have adequate physical education facilities. Some, particularly older schools, have a small shaded concrete playground, and no indoor gym, making sport difficult during the summer.

Newer schools, such as the Al Afaq Model School, tend to have better facilities. It has a large indoor gym and outdoor spaces with play equipment.

ADEC plans to build 100 new “green” public schools in the next decade that will have extensive facilities for sport. Schools lacking gymnasiums and canteens will be the first to be replaced.

Much of yesterdays discussion centred on the role of parents. Dr Adib said improving a child’s health could have an impact on the rest of the family.

“If we get the children interested, they might get the family interested, but it is more important to concentrate on the children,” Dr Adib said. “They are the next generation.”

Lamya Mustafa, a mother of three boys at Al Mutabanbi School for Boys, said enforcing healthy rules was difficult because “boys will be boys”.

“Even if kids are told what is healthy and what is not, they will still like to snack on fun foods,” she said, adding that authorities must create more play areas around the city.

“If it was not for school, there would be nowhere else for the boys to play soccer or basketball. What about during weekends and afternoons and the summer, where can they go then? That is something that should be addressed.”

Every building in city surveyed in drive to achieve 'zero fires

DUBAI - MAY 18: The agency in charge of fire codes in Dubai is close to completing a sweeping examination of standards at every building in the city.

Dubai Civil Defence (DCD) hired 300 fire inspectors from a private company in 2008 to thoroughly sift through the estimated 60,000 high-rises, warehouses, office buildings and homes in the emirate, said Ali al Mutawa, DCD’s head of operations.

His comments come after a series of serious fires over the past week, including a ferocious blaze that destroyed the National Paints factory in Sharjah, a fire that ripped through five warehouses in Dubai on Wednesday and another at a mattress factory in Al Quoz on Saturday.

The inspections are to finish by the end of the year. It has been a monumental endeavour for the team – 200 buildings per inspector, each assigned with scrutinising the sprinkler systems, smoke detectors and alarms, among other features, at a pace of more than a building a week.

Not only are the inspectors on track towards completing the task, according to Mr al Mutawa, they also are helping bring Dubai closer to its goal of having “a zero fire rate.”

“I know it is impossible right now, but, at the same time, Dubai has become more safe,” he said.

“In 2004-2005, there used to be a fire on a daily basis. But today, the reality has changed, and we have gained control over the situation.”

The recent fires suggest that the battle is still uphill for the country, as individual emirates for the most part maintain a patchwork of standards and regulations.

Abu Dhabi’s Department of Municipal Affairs introduced minimum fire safety standards, such as mandatory sprinklers, fire exits and smoke detectors, late last year after a spate of fires.

Sharjah’s industrial areas, perhaps more than any other in the country, have been plagued by fires, most recently by the blaze that wrecked the National Paints building last week.

But in Dubai, the numbers spoke for themselves, Mr al Mutawa said. In the first four months of the year, 572 fires were reported, a drop of 45 per cent from the same period last year.

If the current rate sticks, 2010 would be the second consecutive year in which the incidence of fires dropped by more than 40 per cent.

Mr al Mutawa said: "It’s increased public awareness of fire safety, increased inspections, as well as ramped-up enforcement of [alarm] systems which help to detect fires at an early stage.”

The drop would represent a marked improvement from the sort of infernos that reduced scores of buildings in Al Quoz to rubble after a fireworks warehouse caught fire in 2008. The blaze, which killed two people, was described by Gen Saif al Shafar, the undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior, as the largest fire in UAE history.

Martin Seaward-Case, the chairman of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in Dubai, said the reason that recent fires had grabbed attention was that they had taken place in industrial areas.

“They’ll be more dramatic given the materials that are burning,” he said. “You’ll also see spectacular displays because of that.”

Hareb al Tunaiji, the head of Sharjah’s emergency inspection committee, said industrial areas typically posed particularly hazardous problems because of the flammable materials stored in large quantities.

Al Ittihad newspaper has reported that the committee, created four years ago, recently stopped working with nearly half a dozen firefighting supplies companies after it was sold counterfeit products.

Mr al Tunaiji said the committee had 70 inspectors who conduct fire inspections throughout the emirate, including the roughly 60,000 businesses in Sharjah’s industrial areas.

“We mostly inspect the industrial area,” he said, adding that each company in the area “is inspected twice a year”.

That would require roughly 1,715 inspections a year per inspector for the industrial area alone.

Captain Yasser al Qotairi, a spokesman for Abu Dhabi Civil Defence, placed the blame for fires on building managers. “They are usually negligent and careless about safety measures, or sometimes they lack the awareness or the supervisor doesn’t care about the safety of the workers,” he said.

But an executive at a residential developer with projects in Dubai expressed concern that thorough fire inspections might have been difficult for authorities to conduct.

“When you come to inspect a huge development and you do these in a week, you might miss something,” said the official, who did not want to be named. “When civil defence comes they are professional, they try to check everything. But from a practical point of view, how can you inspect a tower of 40 or 50 storeys in a couple of weeks?”

Mr al Mutawa believes otherwise. Aside from the expected seasonal increase of summer fires, brought on by increased electricity demand for air conditioners and cooling units, what was once an unwieldy phenomenon is essentially being tamed.

“Dubai is a safer place now,” he said.