Tag Archives: entertainment
Time is over for Abu Dhabi govt staff to relocate
Time is over for Abu Dhabi govt staff to relocate Silvia Radan (Special Report) / 1 September 2013 Abu Dhabi govt employees who shift base from other emirates may find bigger space for a little more money, but their working spouses will now have the highway blue The deadline for Abu Dhabi government employees living outside the emirate to move to the capital has arrived. Starting today, thousands of Dubai and Sharjah residents working for a government office in Abu Dhabi should no longer be commuting. However, the first expected effect of this move, traffic ease on the Abu Dhabi – Dubai highway, has not been visible. “In the past couple of months I had to drive several times to Dubai and the traffic was as heavy as always,” said Diana Oliver, a six-year resident of Abu Dhabi. “I presume this decision was made to reduce the highway traffic, which would also lessen the environmental impact with less pollution on the roads, and also the traffic accidents, especially in the early morning hours when fog often occurs,” she said. Oliver recently moved to Khalifa City, just outside Abu Dhabi, where she is taking care of her two young children, but her husband is still driving daily to work into the city and feels the traffic has become heavier here. “He needs to leave five to 10 minutes earlier every morning since the end of Ramadan. Mind you, this may be also because of people returning from holidays and work hours going back to normal,” Oliver said. The family moved to Khalifa City in March this year, at a time when the property market was still reasonable. Since then, rent for both small apartments and villas have gone up gradually. Government employees living outside Abu Dhabi had over a year to change their residence and many preferred to do it earlier rather than at the last minute, to beat the expected rent rise – which economists say rose about eight per cent in the first quarter of the year alone. Among them was B.M., who spoke with Khaleej Times anonymously since most Abu Dhabi government employees are not allowed to speak publically without a prior approval. “We moved in April to avoid rents going up. We got a much better deal here than we had in Dubai,” he said. B.M. used to live in a flat in Dubai Marina, with one parking space. Now he and his family stay in a three bedroom villa in Al Reef, with a garden and a driveway for four cars – useful since his wife drives to work and needs her own car. “Last year we paid nearly Dh90,000 for the flat in Marina, but rents in Dubai are going up as the job market is improving, so this year we would have ended up paying almost the same as we do here, in Al Reef – Dh 110,000. And you can’t compare a villa with a flat; we have got more space now and a green area outdoors,” said B.M. Moving house, especially for a family with two children was not a cheap affair. In B.M.’s case, the cost was Dh8,000. Of this, Dh6,000 was the moving company costs, the rest being other related fees. According to various moving companies, the cost of relocating from Dubai to Abu Dhabi is mostly the charges for packing and unpacking – it only adds about Dh300-500 per truck. For B.M. it was certainly pricy, yet worth it. Living at a 15-minute drive from work, in a more comfortable house had made life much better for him, he said, with the added bonus of finding a good nearby school for his children. But it’s not happy days for everyone. “It’s all good for me, but now my wife has to commute. She has a really good job in Dubai and doesn’t want to leave it, so she drives there daily. I guess a lot of people in our situation do the same, so the highway traffic may ease off on one side, but pick up on the other.” The close proximity to the Dubai highway, where many family members of those who had to move still work and where social lives are often centred, is a reason for many to search for accommodation in areas such as Al Reef, Al Raha Gardens and Khalifa City. The rents are also much lower than downtown Abu Dhabi. For single individuals, Khalifa City remains the “Mecca”, with good facilities and a location near Abu Dhabi city centre, Dubai, Yas Island and Al Ain. Yet, Khalifa City is a red light for anyone looking for a flat. Intended for Emiratis who were granted land to build their homes there, most private developers built villas, got it approved by the municipality, then leased it to a real estate agency, which has split the villa into apartments – then rented to individuals illegally. Most people, especially those new to Abu Dhabi, were unaware of the legal status, and followed a fairly simple procedure of viewing properties with real estate agents, finding one they liked, signing the contract and moving in. Regular municipality raids in Khalifa City have now drawn tenants’ attention to the illegal status, and because their rent contract does not bear the municipality stamp some are landed with a fine and told they have two weeks to move out. Getting the rent back is out of the question, as the real estate companies are not found at fault by anyone, while those licensed by the municipality continue to rent out illegal properties to anyone who doesn’t know the rules. “Etihad Airways, which has its headquarters in Khalifa City, had 200 employees this year who lost their rentals and had to move out of their homes in Khalifa City,” revealed M.T., a new Etihad employee who moved from Dubai to Abu Dhabi a couple of months ago. “Initially I was planning to find accommodation in Khalifa City, but we were told to stay away from it as most villa flats come with illegal contracts. Only when you rent out a full villa do you get the municipality approved stamp on the contract,” she added. M.T. has found a Dh60,000 one bedroom flat in the 15 minutes drive further away Al Reef, which is Dh10,000 more expensive and smaller in space than what she initially found in Khalifa City, but at least she has “peace of mind”. silvia@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
Bounced cheques and courts’ workload
Bounced cheques and courts’ workload Marie Nammour / 1 September 2013 Cases of bounced cheques are seemingly a continual problem for banks and the business world and, in turn, a problem for courts — with one legal advocate suggesting banks adopt a stricter approach to issuing cheque books to customers. Bounced cheque cases which result from business dealings, leasing contracts, credit cards or real estate and contracting project deals worth millions of dirhams, constitute a huge workload for criminal courts which handle these cases on a daily basis. Though there have not been any recent figures on what percentage of criminal cases are bad cheque cases courts handled last year, officials say it is not a small part. According to the 2012 Annual Report of the Dubai Courts and the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts, as many as 37,816 criminal cases were examined by the Dubai Courts in 2012 — an increase of 13 per cent from the previous year, when 33,432 criminal cases were heard. Though there are no available updated figures released by the Public Prosecution on the number of the bad cheque complaints received by Dubai police stations, media reports suggest local banks have received about 1.4 million dud cheques worth a total of $46.8 million in the year to February. Recovering the money In order to recover the money lost when a cheque bounces, complainants must file a civil lawsuit. A civil court starts to look into the lawsuit once the criminal side is determined by the Court of Misdemeanours or the two higher courts (if the defendant decides to appeal). “The claimant needs to wait for the 15-day legal deadline to pass and if the defendant does not appeal then (the claimant) can proceed with the civil lawsuit. He has to provide the civil court with copies and documents from the Public Prosecution stating that the verdict was final.” If the defendant is found guilty, the court will refer the civil lawsuit to the competent civil court and the claimant can pursue it to recover his money. “The case then falls in the hands of the execution judge who would compel the defendant to pay up the cheque or the latter would risk being jailed again.” Such civil lawsuits may take between three to four months at the Dubai Courts before a ruling could be issued. Al Dakhakhny said his firm’s smallest case was for a cheque worth Dh30,000, while the biggest case handled was for a cheque worth Dh3.5 million. mary@khaleejtimes.com Those bounced cheques constitute about a fifth of the overall cheques the local banks received as per statistics by the Central Bank in the same period of time. There has even been a proposal by the UAE Bank Association to the Ministry of Justice to set up courts specialised in the bounced cheque and financial cases to preserve the rights of the banks, the lending and financing firms and other parties. Cheques are a tool Counsel Ahmed Al Dakhakhny of Saeed Al Barq for Advocacy and Legal Consultancy, told Khaleej Times one way some cases could be prevented was through banks limiting issuance of cheque books. “The cheque is a means for settling one’s financial dues. If the banks adopt stricter criteria for issuing cheque books to their customers they would be contributing somehow to curbing the problem of misuse of cheques. The criteria would take into consideration, for instance, the customers’ financial conditions and whether they would be able later to respect the trust the other party gave to them by accepting their signed cheques.” He said when the Emirati legislator put the Penal Code together, he dedicated certain articles to the bounced cheque cases. “The cheque is a tool of financial settlement used in business dealings among people. By protecting the cheque, the legislator has protected the economy and the businesses.” He said bounced cheques severely interrupted the running of businesses and could threaten the ability of a business to deliver on agreements. “Giving a bad cheque can stall a whole process of dealings; to name a few the businesses of trading, exportation and importation, and construction and contracting”. Al Dakhakhny said the cheque was a way to fulfil one’s financial obligations without using cash and giving someone a cheque rather than cash suggested a certain trust by the receiver. However, when the cheque bounced, it meant the person who issued it betrayed that trust — which naturally entailed legal consequences. “A defendant on trial in a bad cheque case would face fraud and breach of trust charges”. Penalty depends on the Judge’s discretion According to article 401 of the Penal Code, any person who writes a bounced cheque shall be slapped with a fine of no less than Dh500 and given a jail sentence of no more than 3 years. Issuing a bad cheque, however, does not result in the defendant’s deportation, Al Dakhakhny pointed out. “The judge will look into the case circumstances, namely the cheque value, the defendant’s conditions and the reason why the cheque bounced. The penalty will depend on the judge’s discretion”. He revealed that his office had an average of four to five bounced cheque cases seen by the Dubai Courts on a daily basis. “Our clients in those cases are of different nationalities. They come from various backgrounds. We have the businessmen, the investors, the workers and other low-income employees. While the first category would take loans, and back it up by signing security blank cheques, to finance certain business projects, the second category would get indebted by an excessive and miscalculated use of credit cards. The low-paid people might also take loans just to survive till pay day.” Often, such people gave security cheques which they later failed to settle due to their cumulative interests, he said. “We have also other clients who were caught in such cases because of their carefree spending and their purchases of luxury goods. They wanted to buy an expensive flat TV set or a fancy sports car, for example, and they gave security cheques in return as a guarantee for re-payment of the debt. The cheques would most often bounce”. One of his clients is a 35-year-old Iranian investor who was sentenced to three years in prison by Dubai’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, after he lost an appeal on the charge of issuing a bad cheque worth Dh3.5 million. The court referred the civil lawsuit to the relevant civil court. In another case, another investor took a bank loan to finance his purchase of two residential units. The loan was worth more than Dh2 million. The investor was jailed after the bank took action against him when he defaulted the regular payment of instalments. He was told to settle two blank security cheques he had signed, worth in total Dh3.2 million. He was convicted and respectively sentenced to one year and three years in prison for both cases. In a different case, another accused has been ordered by the Court of Misdemeanours to pay a Dh5,000 fine for issuing a bounced cheque worth Dh250,000, and the civil lawsuit was referred to a civil court. What makes someone issue a dud cheque? According to the lawyer, in some cases, it is the lack of knowledge that pushes a person to such a crime as he would usually be oblivious to the legal effects that he might face when giving a cheque, with a high risk of bouncing, in any kind of transaction. In other, more common, cases, some might think their long-standing business deals with a particular party would spare or protect them from legal repercussions due to a relationship of good faith — which turns out to be unfounded. “They would not see the legal trouble coming until they are called to the police stations or served notice about a court case. mary@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
It’s school time again
Sarah Young As school gets back in session and new shoes are on the agenda, getting the right fit is a must for children, says a long-time shoe fitter. An expert on feet and shoe fitting for 44 years, Clarks International global children’s consultant Bob Hardy is visiting Dubai to provide training for Clark store managers, and parents with advice on shoe fitting for children, as school begins. It was extremely important for parents to get the right shoes given the wrong size could do a lot of harm when worn for the whole year, he said — especially considering children would walk about a million steps and spend 1,000 hours in those shoes – absorbing 50 litres of perspiration by the time the year is out. The development of children’s feet was ‘a total mystery’ to many parents, he said, who did not realise how quickly they grew. In the first year alone, a child’s feet would grow 25 millimetres, while from age one to five, they would grow 16mm each year, and then eight to 10mm per year from school age to mid-teens when the feet stopped growing, he said. Shoe companies offered half sizes, and width options, as well as integrating ‘growing room’ into the shoes, he said. Children often did not feel pain from ill-fitting shoes due the large amounts of fatty tissue in their feet, but the damage was still being done and would be felt when they were older, he said. Seventy per cent of adults would have had some sort of serious foot problem by the time they were 30, he said. Only 30 per cent of people actually had a standard fitting, he added. Hardy said a ‘geographical blip’ led him to his profession, as he was born one kilometre from the Clark headquarters. He left school in 1970 at the age of 16 and ended up standing in the Clark’s shoe factory “wondering what the hell I had done”. But it has proved a long love affair taking him on training trips to 45 countries. “I’ve been to so many different countries and met so many people … and it’s nice to see people using the things you’ve passed on or taught them on a daily basis.” His first visit to Dubai was in 1989, and much has changed since that time when a tractor drove up to the plane to collect their luggage. The UAE was one of the most challenging markets, given it was one of the most diverse in the world, and like a “mini-United States” in terms of the various population groups and differing lifestyle choices and tastes, he said. The warm weather and the amount of time spent in air conditioning meant customers could want from sandals to heeled, long boots. And, traditional local preferences meant styles exclusive to the Middle East had to be catered for, such as the men’s Arabic style sandal, he said. The biggest mistake he saw here was the tendency for people to wear ill-fitting sandals, and the number of people he saw “shuffling around and not walking properly, curling their toes up to hold their shoes on,” was worrying, he said. Traditional, natural materials such as leather and rubber were still the best for breathing, flexibility and toughness, he added. So what about his most challenging shoe-fitting experience? An Englishman who was convinced he had size 13 feet that were very wide, and no amount of measuring his feet or fitting shoes would make him believe his feet were actually a narrow size 11. “The shoes he walked in with could have held both his feet. “Although this probably wasn’t a foot problem….” sarah@khaleejtimes.com Continue reading
