Abu Dhabi and Dubai Blog

In similarity to a previous story from Dubai, Abu Dhabi’s civil authorities are now carrying out evictions on multi-family villas, allegedly for safety reasons.

Abu Dhabi Municipality launched a week-long campaign against makeshift homes on the weekend, but it has been clamping down on partitioned accommodation since late last summer. While many families have found themselves without anywhere to live, often at short notice, the municipality insisted that a formal policy of keeping only one family in each home did not exist.

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090203/NATIONAL/97623614/1119

Opinion piece from the Guardian on social issues raised by the BBC’s decision film episode of hit British TV show in emirate’s leading city.

Though Dubai might be doing an effective job of presenting itself as a glitzy tourist destination, a place associated with mind-boggling decadence and the embodiment in glass and steel of the determination of the human spirit, the fact is, you may run out of fingers counting the ways in which filming even some of Doctor Who there is wrong.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/garethmcleanblog/2009/jan/16/1

DUBAI – All the actions and steps being taken by the Dubai Municipality to end the menace of sewage accumulation in labour accommodations, the increase in penalties and intensifying inspections seem to turn sour if one visits the Al Quoz area and witnesses the deplorable conditions of people living amidst the sewage.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?col=&section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2009/January/theuae_January139.xml

This short peice from Sharjah tells the story of an illegal Bangladeshi migrant who died trying to evade authorities, after he jumped from the seventh story of an apartment. It also notes that an Indian construction worker recently died after being hit on the head by falling concrete, at a site where the managment did not provide hardhats to the employees. In passing it mentions that in the past 2 weeks alone there have been 10 deaths of construction workers in the city due to lax safety standards. For a city neighbouring Dubai these events seem to have a disturbingly low level of publicity.

Since the length of the room is only slightly larger than the height of an adult male, the workers have to make vertical arrangements by having two sleep on a two-level bunk bed while the other two sleep on the tiles beneath. A fan is attached to a wall to keep them cool.

http://www.gulfnews.com/nation/Housing_and_Property/10258079.html

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The UAE has just released its first national report on human rights, which outlines different ways the country can move forward in the areas of women’s rights, labour conditions, and other domains. In other news an Emirates citizen was recently sentenced to death for possession of an unspecified quantity of drugs.

A small sample of some of the more notable detainees of the many hundreds of foreigners arrested and imprisoned in Dubai for relatively small offences. Though they are privileged by their countries of origin and status, resulting in many early releases and pardons, spending even a month in jail for posession of perscription medication may be a frustrating experience.

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Families face eviction in Dubai as authorities make residence sharing illegal.

http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=52811&n_tit=U.A.E.+%3A+Families++Sharing+Villas+in+Dubai+Defy+Evictions

After spending 10 months in a Dubai prison for possession of 2 grams of cannabis, British drum and bass DJ Grooverider has been sent home.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music/newsid_7649000/7649435.stm

Chennai: Over 3,000 Indian workers who had been detained in various jails in the UAE on July 7 on charges of rioting at their labour camp in Ras Al Khaimah were released on Tuesday.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indians_Abroad/Indian_workers_detained_in_UAE_released/articleshow/3538259.cms