NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL
Property law gives landlords power to evict tenants and raise rents
ABU DHABI - MAR 11: A new property law in the capital will make it easier for landords to evict low-paying tenants, in effect weakening the existing rent cap.
And for the first time, judges will settle rent disputes under the umbrella of the Ministry of Justice.
The new legislation will be fully implemented by November. The five per cent rent cap will remain, but landlords will now be able to evict tenants at the end of the lease period, after giving two months’ notice for residential property and three months for commercial property, and take on new tenants at a renegotiated rent.
The new law removes the automatic right of tenants to renew leases for five years with a maximum five per cent rent increase each year.
Property analysts were divided yesterday on the effect on rents of the new law; some said it would benefit landlords and property investors by effectively establishing a “floor” for rents, but others said downward pressure on rents in Abu Dhabi would continue as more units came on to the market and Dubai rents remained more competitive.
Rents more than doubled in the capital between 2006 and 2008, and barely decreased during the economic downturn because of a lack of accommodation on the market.
Many landlords were unable to remove tenants or, because of the mandatory five per cent cap, raise rent in line with the market.
David Nunn of the law firm Simmons and Simmons said: “The rent cap is not being touched but the automatic right of renewal of the leases is being removed. Before, you knew you could call unilaterally for an extension after the term of the lease, for up to five years, even if the landlord wanted you to leave.
“Some landlords actually preferred to keep a building empty in the hope of reselling it, rather than be stuck with a tenant for years.”
The new law will also bring the existing Abu Dhabi Rental Disputes Resolution Committee and its appeal arm under the authority of the Ministry of Justice, and add a third level, the cassation committee.
Karim Nassir, a partner from the law firm Habib al Mulla, said: “The chairman of the rent, appeal and cassation committees should be a judge, whereas they used to be appointed by the Executive Council.
“The employees now are part of the Department of Justice. This is the place where it should be. Now the committees are chaired by a judge so we have a legal professional on the committee.”
Tenants, however, were more concerned about the effect on rents. Graham Bentley, 34, from Dunstable in the UK, who rents a villa with his family in the Officer’s City district of Abu Dhabi, said: “It sounds like a nightmare. Tenants are going to have a lot less protection.”
Mr Bentley admitted the existing law was too harsh on property owners, but said the tide had now shifted too much. “If the market pushes rents up the way it has done in the past but rents are capped at five per cent, then landlords will just throw out the existing tenants at the end of their contract and get someone in for more money,” he said.
“Most people in Abu Dhabi already think they are paying over the odds for where they are living. Lots of people are already moving to Dubai because of high rents.”
Tenants who are about to reach the end of their lease will be able to stay until November this year if they have not lived there for five years, according to the law. Landlords will not be able to ask them to leave.
“Many tenancy contracts have been signed under law 20 of 2006, which would expire today,” Mr Nassir said. “Everything has been postponed to November 2010.”
A landlord could still evict a tenant before then, however, provided the Rental Disputes Resolution Committee agreed on the basis that the occupancy “causes serious harm to the landlord”, the law says, and provided the tenant had already been living there for two years.
Ziad Bushnaq, from the brokerage Cornerstone said: “Abu Dhabi landlords should rather think about decreasing rents as they will face more competition very soon.”
Mark Orman, a property lawyer with Trowers and Hamlins, said the change would make it easier for landlords to redevelop rundown buildings. “A lot of the properties here are quite old and in a bad state of repair,” he said. “For landlords who wish to redevelop them, it can be quite a complicated process. This change will make it much easier to improve the quality of apartments in Abu Dhabi.”
Mother's death is tragic wake-up call for drivers
ABU DHABI - MAR 11: The death of a female motorist who was apparently distracted by a child sitting in the front seat of her car should serve as a wake-up call for parents who fail to properly restrain young passengers, safety advocates said yesterday.
“Driving is something that requires 100 per cent attention,” said Bernadette Bhacker, who runs a road safety awareness campaign in Oman called Salim and Salimah (Safe and Sound).
“It is not something we can multitask on and it could have in a way been the same if she had been distracted by any other factor, like using a GSM or trying to drink coffee.”
The UAE does not yet have a law requiring parents to strap in their young ones, but police have said one is expected to be in place by next year.
“The recent case emphasises the need for introducing the regulation and also enforcing it,” said Dr Mohammed el Sadig, an expert in safety promotion and accident prevention at UAE University in Al Ain.
Eighty-three per cent of children who wear seat belts or sit in safety seats are not hurt in crashes, according to the European Transport Safety Council.
The mother died on a highway outside Abu Dhabi on Tuesday afternoon when her car slammed into a roadside barrier and caught fire. The child was injured.
Lt Col Mohammad Ahmad al Mazroui, the head of Abu Dhabi Police’s highways section, said a preliminary investigation indicated that the Pakistani woman had been distracted by her child, who was riding in the front seat.
Allowing a child under the age of 10 to travel in the front of the vehicle is illegal under the black points system. The penalty is a Dh400 fine and four black points.
Following the crash, Abu Dhabi Police warned parents not to allow children under the age of 10 to sit in the front seat of a vehicle and stressed the need for children to be properly restrained.
“Putting them in a car seat guarantees they won’t fidget with the car and open the door and distract the driver,” said Major Ahmed al Niyadi, the head of media and public relations for the traffic section. “They will also get used to wearing a seat belt from childhood.”
Brig Gen Ghaith al Zaabi, the head of the federal traffic department, reiterated that his department is working hard to ensure a child car seat law is in place before the end of the year.
“We are already in a hurry to issue the child car seat law, even before hearing about yesterday’s accident,” he said. “But to issue a child-seat law we need specifications for the car seats.”
Gen al Zaabi said the ministry sent a proposal to the Emirates Authority for Standardisation and Metrology six months ago, asking them to specify the appropriate types for different age groups and to ensure that seats sold in the UAE matched a standard set by the authority.
“The law is not on hold because of them; we will issue it as soon as we can anyway,” Gen al Zaabi said. “But there is no point issuing a law without specifying what should go under it.”
In the meantime, the Health Authority-Abu Dhabi said up to 4,500 free baby car seats will be handed out to parents as part of an education campaign to start later this year.
Fatal accident echoes deadly fog pile-up
UAE - MAR 11: A bus driver was killed and 40 people injured when about 20 cars collided in Jebel Ali. The accident was caused by poor visibiity due to fog. Paulo Vecina / The National; Dubai Police
Two years after Fog Tuesday, when four people were killed and hundreds injured in a 200-car pile-up, poor visibility was blamed for another deadly chain reaction.
Almost two years to the day after the horrific crash in Ghantoot that became known as Fog Tuesday, a pile-up in Jebel Ali killed a bus driver and injured 40 other people.
In an echo of the carnage on the Abu Dhabi-Dubai motorway on March 11, 2008, yesterday’s morning commute saw between 20 and 30 cars involved in a deadly chain reaction.
The accident happened on the Jebel Ali-Lehbab road, which leads up to Emirates Road, before 7am.It began when a bus carrying labourers hit a cement truck. Another truck then slammed into the bus, killing its driver instantly.
Police were unclear if the bus was in the middle of the road or on the hard shoulder at the time of the accident.
“The truck was speeding and because of the foggy conditions the driver did not notice the two vehicles,” said the police official. “As a result of the crash, the bus was then trapped between the two trucks.”
Rescue workers had to use hydraulic cutters to prise open the bus, which was stuck between the two lorries, and free the labourers trapped inside. Four people were seriously hurt and 34 suffered moderate and mild injuries.
Minish Kumar, of Galaxy Building Contractor, said three of his 15 employees were injured.
“The three of them were sent to hospital,” he said. “One had leg injuries and the other two were being examined at the hospital.”
Heavy fog warnings were flashed across all traffic information signs in Dubai, telling motorists to slow down and warning them of the dangers of driving in fog.
Hussein Mohammed al Banna, the director of the traffic department at RTA Traffic and Roads Agency, advised motorists to heed safety messages.
Drivers were asked to use their low beams to improve visibility.
“If there is a lack of vision, or the motorist cannot drive the car safely, we’re asking them to pull over and wait for the fog to lift or for better visibility,” he said.
Despite lessons learned from the 200-car pile-up two years ago, in which four people died and 350 were injured during early morning rush hour, yesterday’s crash showed that motorists are still not adjusting their speed to match bad weather conditions.
In fact, some motorists seem to have a carefree attitude towards the phenomenon, which usually occurs during the winter.
“It doesn’t matter for me because I think [the fog] is very rare,” said Ahmed Hafez, 33, from Egypt, at an Adnoc petrol station on the motorway.
He said that when there was fog, his response was to lower his speed from about 160kph to about 140 kph. “It happens only maybe seven days a year. We can manage with this,” he said.
However, officials said the accident in Ghantoot was a wake-up call.
Brig Gen Ghaith al Zaabi, the director of the federal traffic department, said that, in the crash’s aftermath, the ministry conducted a survey of traffic safety methods used around the world during fog, and had begun implementing some of them.
Police patrols are now sent out to help motorists form convoys, and electronic message signs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi warn motorists when there is fog ahead. Some 40 portable electronic signs have been added to Abu Dhabi’s highways alone.
Col Hussein al Harethi, the head of Abu Dhabi Police’s traffic section, said the signs were introduced late last year. Messages ask drivers to slow down, tell them about detours, accidents ahead and provide other safety tips.
When patrols report bad road conditions, staff at a central police operation room can send pre-scripted warning messages from a digital library to the signs, which are moved to appropriate locations by staff from the Department of Transport.
“The advantage of these signs is that they are wireless and can be moved easily to locations in need,” Col al Harethi said.
In the long run, officials were developing an intelligent transport system that would provide up-to-date information about road conditions to authorities and motorists, Brig Gen al Zaabi said. A study by UAE University in Al Ain into implementing a system that involves all the emirates’ traffic and transport departments had been submitted to the Cabinet, he added.
Abu Dhabi is working on its own early fog warning system that would monitor weather through a series of roadside sensors.
Staff in a central operations room will be able to post information on a network of roadside signs, such as a new speed limit over several kilometres of road.
Speed cameras would enforce the system, which was first mooted by the Department of Transport last year. The department said at the time that such a system was about five years away from being implemented. In Dubai, the municipality announced plans to install climate monitoring stations with early fog detectors.
The changes will not come soon enough for Matt Seirfert, 28, from Germany, who was caught up in the 200 car pile-up on his daily commute to work.
He walked away from the crash but has decided to buy a 4x4. Last year, he moved to Dubai, a decision he said was influenced by a fear that he would be involved in a crash while commuting.
“I moved to Dubai because I didn’t want to drive anymore,” he said. “I had no interest in driving that distance every day or taking the risk. The more you drive, there’s more risk.”
He was not surprised by news of the 20-car pile-up. “It is a sort of a phenomenon around here. We still have people on the roads who can’t drive and are overwhelmed by a situation like this.”
Other concerned motorists said yesterday that they noticed little change in driver behaviour on the main stretch of highway between Dubai and Abu Dhabi where the Ghantoot accident occurred.
Cheryl Shuttle, 47, from Toronto, who commutes from Dubai to Mussafah, said: “Nothing has changed. I fear for my life every single day.
“It is not just about the fog. It is about people being sensible, and if you don’t know how to drive sensibly you are not going to drive sensibly, fog or no fog.”
Woman gives kidney to husband
ABU DHABI - MAR 11: An Indian man has received a new kidney from his wife even though she was not a compatible donor, in the first surgery of its kind in the UAE.
Abdul Ameer, 50, is enjoying a new lease of life following the transplant at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC).
His wife, Sheeba, 36, said she “didn’t think twice” about offering one of her kidneys, but when the couple travelled home to India for a transplant, tests showed that she was not a suitable donor, according to a press release from SKMC.
However, surgeons at SKMC performed a “cross-match desensitisation”. In a complex procedure before the operation, antibodies in Mr Ameer’s blood were removed over three months to prevent him from rejecting his wife’s kidney. It was the first time that the procedure had been performed in this country.
Details of the operation, which took place in November, were disclosed by the hospital yesterday.
Many dialysis patients have to wait years for a suitable donor to be found. The couple jumped at the chance of the ground-breaking operation.
“He is my life partner and I want to spend more time with him,” said Mrs Ameer.
In cross-match desensitisation, the patient is given a drug to suppress antibody production before the second stage, plasma exchange.
Plasma, a part of blood which contains antibodies, is removed, causing the antibody level in the blood to fall enough to ensure that the donor organ can be accepted. In the US, more than 96 per cent of patients who have had the surgery have survived for a year, according to one study.
“The patient is very happy with his new kidney which is totally functional at this time,” said Dr Abrar Khan, the director of transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery. The multi-organ transplantation programme at SKMC, the emirate’s largest public hospital, began in February 2008. It has performed 21 kidney transplants.