Tourists visiting the Burj Khalifa have told how dozens of people “began to cry” after being stranded on the building’s observation deck for over an hour.
At the Top, a visitor attraction located on the 124th floor of the world’s tallest building, is temporarily closed to the public following “technical issues with the power supply” but is scheduled to reopen on Sunday, February 14.
A senior Dubai Civil Defence official confirmed to Gulf News on Monday there was an incident at the Burj Khalifa on Saturday evening.
The official said: “This is a minor case; it was not serious at all. Staff members at the Burj Khalifa handled the situation perfectly. Our role was to ensure the safety of the public. It is absolutely normal for a new building to face minor issues such as this, which involved one of the Burj Khalifa’s elevators.”
Gulf News spoke on Monday to several tourists who were stranded on the observation deck for over an hour on Saturday.
Michael Timms, a 31-year-old telecommunications engineer from the US, said: “I was walking around the observation deck when I heard this really loud noise and what looked like smoke or dust coming out from one of the elevator doors. There were at least 60 people on the deck at the time. Employees and security staff were telling people that everything was ok. But once it became clear we were not being allowed back down, some people got really angry while others started crying.”…SOURCE
The Palm Jumeirah is not sinking into the sea, contrary to speculation in recent days, a Nakheel executive says.
“The proof is in the pudding,” said Shaun Lenehan, the head of Nakheel’s environment department. “The Palm is intact. If there were subsidence, you would see cracks in the buildings, windows popping out. We have no evidence of that happening.”
But the US$12 billion (Dh44.07) island has settled slightly since it was created, in line with all artificially created land masses, Mr Lenehan and other engineers said.
Is Atlantis Destined to Sink?
He was responding to claims from a landscape surveyor speaking at a conference in Qatar, who was quoted as saying that the Palm Jumeirah was sinking by an average of 5mm a year and might flood in the future if ocean levels rose. The engineer cited satellite images of the island taken periodically over the past few years…MORE
Just ask yourself, why would you buy when the charges may be as high as 100k per year for maintenance…
Homeowners in The Cove development in Ras al Khaimah could each face service bills of more than Dh100,000 (US$27,226) a year because the developer must rely on generators to provide power to the luxury resort.
That is more than the average cost of renting a villa in the emirate, which has been beset by acute electricity shortages.
“If they are running the airconditioning during the month, they are having a bill of Dh3000 to Dh4000 a month,” said Ashraf al Agamawy, the manager of the project, which includes a five-star Rotana Hotel.
“We don’t get electricity from the Government and are running over eight diesel generators, which is very expensive.
The Cove in Ras Al Khaimah
It costs me about Dh2.5 million per month.”
The Cove was launched in April 2005 by Orascom Hotels and Development, one of Egypt’s largest developers. It comprises 78 apartments and 188 villas, 75 of which were sold under a form of timeshare agreement with the Rotana Hotel.
Under timeshare agreements, owners are allowed to use their villas for a maximum of four weeks a year…SOURCE
The world’s tallest skyscraper, Burj Dubai, will open on December 2, the project developers have said in a commitment of date. The opening coincides with the 38th National Day of the United Arab Emirates.
“We are shooting for the National Day,” Emaar Properties Chairman Mohammed Alabbar told CNN on Friday. “I think it is achievable; lot of challenges, but we will get there.”
Speaking about the last-minute touches, he said, “We have about 12,000 people inside the building and outside trying to achieve the December 2 opening.”
Construction of Burj Dubai, which shoots 800 metres into the skies over Business Bay, began on September 21, 2004 as part of the $20-billion Downtown Burj Dubai real estate development.
The opening of Emaar’s flagship project has met with delays. It was originally scheduled to open last September. Since then there has been suspense over whether it would, in fact, open by the end of 2009… SOURCE
More than a year ago, Dubai quietly launched a wide-ranging anti-corruption investigation to revitalise investor confidence in the emirate.
The results of the operation so far, revealed to The National, are staggering: 11 investigations or court cases are under way; 34 executives are either in court or on their way there; and Dh3.58 billion (US$950 million) has allegedly been stolen or used as bribe money, according to files from public prosecutors that give the first overview of the whole operation.
Since March 2008, investigators appointed by the Dubai Government have been looking into executives from some of Dubai’s leading real estate and financial firms, a move acknowledged by the Government for the first time a year ago this week. In an online question-and-answer session earlier this year, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, said the reason was simple: “No one in the Emirates is above the law and accountability.”…SOURCE
Dubai Government officials have tried to sound upbeat in recent days, saying that the ‘bad times’ are now in the past, and that might be technically correct – with property and equity prices now so low that the additional possible downside is limited. Yet there are few in local business who do not see a hard road ahead.
Dubai Land Department figures showed some buyers getting extraordinary bargains last week with a total of 12 villas changing hands for an average of $286,000 each, and 535 apartments sold for an average price of $193,000. Agents talk of ‘distress selling’ and indeed at these price levels the downside is relatively low for buyers.
$10bn bond
However, the idea that the $10 billion raised from the UAE Central Bank in a government bond issue will restore the Dubai boom look wide of the mark. This is a substantial sum. But there are billions in loans to refinance, interest to pay on $80 billion in total debts and a lot of money now outstanding to contractors.
Dubai has the unenviable task of unwinding a real estate boom in the face of the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s. That is a major challenge even with the rich UAE federation as a lender of last resort.
There are difficult choices ahead. It is already clear that construction work is proceeding at full speed on The Palm Jumeirah, Downtown Dubai and the Burj Dubai and Business Bay. On many other sites across the city work has stopped, and it is hard to see how this will restart anytime soon.
Global trade has fallen off a cliff in the first quarter of 2009, and Dubai as the trading hub of the Middle East has clearly been affected.
The oil market also looks unreasonably weak given this collapse in trade and slumping economies around the globe. The International Energy Agency has warned that oil demand will drop by 2.4 million barrels per day in 2009, citing a growing consensus that economic recovery will be delayed until at least 2010…SOURCE
It is the promise of a land of opportunity that has brought an estimated one million migrant workers to Dubai. Most come from areas of extreme poverty in the Indian sub-continent where they are easy prey for recruitment agents. Paying up to £2,000 pounds to make the trip, the sum often has to be borrowed or family land sold in the belief that within 18 months the debt can be repaid.
Instead, on arriving in Dubai they are met with shanty town conditions hidden from public view. In a country that penalises journalists reporting stories which negatively reflect the economy or insult the government with massive fines and in the past even imprisonment, Panorama had to maintain a low profile.
In secret, Ben Anderson followed a group of workers home from work. Employed by The First Group’s sub-contractors United Engineering Construction, they were working on a development due to be finished in June ready for Michael Owen to move in.
Back at the worker’s camp Ben was soon rumbled and asked to leave. Returning over the next few days he finally managed to speak to some of the men living there on condition of anonymity.
“We suffer greatly”
They told a grim tale. None had been paid the money they were promised by the recruitment agencies and many said they could not afford to eat properly, living on a diet of mashed potatoes and lentils.
Average salaries are often no more than £120 a month. This for a six-day week, often working up to 12 hour shifts. One company paid approximately 30 pence an hour for overtime.
UNEC said that its minimum basic salary and overtime rate were significantly higher and that employees only worked 12 hour days in exceptional circumstances.
It said its workers were fully aware of their proposed terms of employment before travelling to Dubai and that it “wholly disapproved” of workers paying recruitment agents. It also said that it only recruited through one agency in India, but the workers we spoke to came from elsewhere.
The First Group said its own checks had confirmed that the pay and conditions at the camp were legal.
The camp is a world away from the penthouses these construction workers were building. But this is not an isolated example.
One of Dubai’s biggest new developments is The Jumeirah Golf Estates, which will host the climax of the European Golf championship in November. The main developer is Leisurecorp, which also owns the championship golf course at Turnberry in Scotland, and has a stake in Troon. Jumeirah Golf Estates has attracted an incredible array of celebrities who are named as ambassadors on its website , including Jamie Oliver, Greg Norman, Vijay Singh and Sergio Garcia.
Our reporter once again followed workers back to their accommodation. This time they were employed by one of Dubai’s biggest construction firms Arabtec to work on a part of the development that had been sold to a sub-developer, but the picture was familiar.
After an hour-long journey back to their gated and guarded labour camp, the men agreed to speak to Panorama if their identities were kept secret for fear of retribution.
Armed with a secret camera Ben sneaked into the camp to be met with the smell of raw sewage. Sewage had leaked out all over the camp, and workers had to create a network stepping stones to cross it and get back to their accommodation blocks. One toilet block had no water supply and the latrines were filled with piles of raw faeces…SOURCE
While USA2UAE makes no claims as to use, the above program is available via torrent on Mininova (CLICK HERE TO GET SEED)
The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny spike, jabbing farther into the sky than any other human construction in history.
But something has flickered in Sheikh Mohammed’s smile. The ubiquitous cranes have paused on the skyline, as if stuck in time. There are countless buildings half-finished, seemingly abandoned. In the swankiest new constructions – like the vast Atlantis hotel, a giant pink castle built in 1,000 days for $1.5bn on its own artificial island – where rainwater is leaking from the ceilings and the tiles are falling off the roof. This Neverland was built on the Never-Never – and now the cracks are beginning to show. Suddenly it looks less like Manhattan in the sun than Iceland in the desert.
Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.
Karen Andrews can’t speak. Every time she starts to tell her story, she puts her head down and crumples. She is slim and angular and has the faded radiance of the once-rich, even though her clothes are as creased as her forehead. I find her in the car park of one of Dubai’s finest international hotels, where she is living, in her Range Rover. She has been sleeping here for months, thanks to the kindness of the Bangladeshi car park attendants who don’t have the heart to move her on. This is not where she thought her Dubai dream would end.
Her story comes out in stutters, over four hours. At times, her old voice – witty and warm – breaks through. Karen came here from Canada when her husband was offered a job in the senior division of a famous multinational. “When he said Dubai, I said – if you want me to wear black and quit booze, baby, you’ve got the wrong girl. But he asked me to give it a chance. And I loved him.”
All her worries melted when she touched down in Dubai in 2005. “It was an adult Disneyland, where Sheikh Mohammed is the mouse,” she says. “Life was fantastic. You had these amazing big apartments, you had a whole army of your own staff, you pay no taxes at all. It seemed like everyone was a CEO. We were partying the whole time.”
Her husband, Daniel, bought two properties. “We were drunk on Dubai,” she says. But for the first time in his life, he was beginning to mismanage their finances. “We’re not talking huge sums, but he was getting confused. It was so unlike Daniel, I was surprised. We got into a little bit of debt.” After a year, she found out why: Daniel was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
One doctor told him he had a year to live; another said it was benign and he’d be okay. But the debts were growing. “Before I came here, I didn’t know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada’s or any other liberal democracy’s,” she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can’t pay, you go to prison.
“When we realised that, I sat Daniel down and told him: listen, we need to get out of here. He knew he was guaranteed a pay-off when he resigned, so we said – right, let’s take the pay-off, clear the debt, and go.” So Daniel resigned – but he was given a lower pay-off than his contract suggested. The debt remained. As soon as you quit your job in Dubai, your employer has to inform your bank. If you have any outstanding debts that aren’t covered by your savings, then all your accounts are frozen, and you are forbidden to leave the country.
“Suddenly our cards stopped working. We had nothing. We were thrown out of our apartment.” Karen can’t speak about what happened next for a long time; she is shaking.
Daniel was arrested and taken away on the day of their eviction. It was six days before she could talk to him. “He told me he was put in a cell with another debtor, a Sri Lankan guy who was only 27, who said he couldn’t face the shame to his family. Daniel woke up and the boy had swallowed razor-blades. He banged for help, but nobody came, and the boy died in front of him.”
Karen managed to beg from her friends for a few weeks, “but it was so humiliating. I’ve never lived like this. I worked in the fashion industry. I had my own shops. I’ve never…” She peters out.
Daniel was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment at a trial he couldn’t understand. It was in Arabic, and there was no translation. “Now I’m here illegally, too,” Karen says I’ve got no money, nothing. I have to last nine months until he’s out, somehow.” Looking away, almost paralysed with embarrassment, she asks if I could buy her a meal.
She is not alone. All over the city, there are maxed-out expats sleeping secretly in the sand-dunes or the airport or in their cars.
“The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems,” Karen says at last. “Nothing. This isn’t a city, it’s a con-job. They lure you in telling you it’s one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it’s a medieval dictatorship.”…SOURCE
The UAE economy may contract this year due to the global credit crisis, Sultan Bin Saeed Al Mansouri, the Minister of Economy, said today.
“There could be some contraction,“ Mr al Mansouri Ck said in Dubai. “If the world economy goes on like this it will be contractive.”
He stressed, however, that the UAE would be less affected than many other countries, although the oil price was one of the key determinants of how the Emirates would fare.
Mr al Mansouri said the Government had not received any demands to help big companies with additional funds. “No big companies have requested extra liquidity until now,” he said. Many companies, particularly big developers, are said to have fallen behind on their payments as funds are hard to raise.
Mr al Mansouri added that it was “not an option right now” to liquidate either Tamweel or Amlak, the country’s two largest Islamic lenders. He said a merger remained “one of the good options”… SOURCE
Plummeting rents are luring expatriates from cramped flats in Dubai’s older suburbs to more modern and spacious accommodation in new areas of the city.
According to a Khaleej Times straw poll, rents have declined by up to 45 per cent in some areas of Dubai.
However, an online survey has shown that the same areas have experienced a spike in interest.
Manager of Dubai-based Geometrics Real Estate, Musham Khan, said that a number of people who had been living in cramped accommodation in older areas of Dubai could now afford to live in newer areas of the city.
“We have seen a significant decline in the rent in Discovery Gardens,” he said. “As it becomes affordable more people are going to move there.
“I had two customers who were living in old buildings in Bur Dubai who moved to Discovery Gardens after their previous landlords raised their rents. They were paying the same as they were in their old accommodation.”
Over February, a fifth of all page views on UAE real estate web site, Propertyfinder.ae, came from people looking into renting in Discovery Gardens.
According to averages calculated from five properties listed on auction web site Dubizzle.com, rents for a studio in Discovery Gardens now stand at Dh45,000.
Data from the third quarter of 2008 listed on the Real Estate Regulatory Agency rent index shows a studio as listed as Dh70,000, making the price now a drop of 35 per cent…SOURCE
03/10/2009 10:51 PM | By Samir Salama, Associate Editor
Abu Dhabi: A draft law on credit information, which provides for the creation of an independent company that will keep data on every Emirati and expatriate, was passed on Tuesday by Federal National Council.
Obaid Humaid Al Tayer, Minister of State for Financial Affairs, said the proposed company provide banks and financing firms licensed by the Central Bank with information concerning the clients applying for loans or credit cards.
He assured the House the company would run its affairs in complete confidentiality…
03/10/2009 09:24 AM | By Suzanne Fenton, Staff Reporter
Dubai: New units are set to enter the Dubai realty market over the next two years, despite the global financial downturn.
However, this figure is likely to drop due to declining demand, tight liquidity and strict financing options.
Approximately 32,000 new residential units were completed in 2008, bringing the total number of residential stock in Dubai to around 253,000.
Cancellations and construction delays will reduce the total announced residential supply by more than 50 per cent – with around 90,000 more units set to come on to the market between 2009 and 2011 – according to a Lang LaSalle report.
More than 50 per cent of the announced residential and commercial projects due for completion between 2009 and 2012 have now been put on hold or cancelled due to lack of available funding and easing demand.
Because of the global financial downturn, even top developers, such as Nakheel and Meraas have been forced to reschedule, postpone or cancel some of their projects.
These projects include Nakheel’s kilometre-tall tower and Trump International Hotel and Tower and Meraas’ Jumeirah Garden City which, at a cool Dh350 billion, involved various microclimates and a mini-Manhattan.
Since the last quarter of 2008, prices have dropped and so have rents, up to 50 per cent in certain areas of Dubai, according to officials at Dubai Land Department.
Prices generally, not just for residential properties, are expected to continue falling throughout this year and bottom out some time in 2010, said Craig Plumb, head of research in Mena region, Jones Lang LaSalle…
New research shows Dubai’s hotels are emptier now than at any time in the past half decade because of a slump in visitors and an increased number of rooms.
The Jones Lang LaSalle property report Monday also shows that the supply of empty office space in the Middle East tourism and trade hub doubled to 16 percent over the past six months. That’s the highest rate on record.
The Chicago-based business consultancy estimates half of the residential and commercial projects planned for the fast-growing city-state through 2012 have been put on hold or scrapped outright…SOURCE
Meraas Development, a new property company launched as the five-year boom was subsiding, is “adapting” the master plan and designs for its Jumeira Gardens project in Dubai to fit the market conditions, executives said Wednesday.
Jumeira Gardens was announced at Cityscape last October, where it was described as a Dh350bn (US$95.3bn) project that would unfold over several years. The designs showed five towers, including a trio of buildings more than 600-metres tall that would be connected by inhabitable sky bridges, as well as islands off the coast and a network of canals.
But with sales slowed to a trickle in the emirate and developers struggling with a lack of cash flow and credit, the company has opted to change its plans. Most contractors have been discharged or told to halt activity until a revision of the plans is complete.
“Shifting away from the fast track development of its Jumeira Gardens project, and in light of the rapid change in the real estate market and global economic conditions, Meraas Development is now focusing on adapting its master plan, designs and product mix to suit market conditions,” the company said in a statement today…SOURCE
…Speculation of consolidation among Dubai’s biggest developers has mounted since the downturn hit the property sector, where prices have fallen by an average of 25 per cent since their peaks last September, according to a recent report by Morgan Stanley.
“I am a big supporter of mergers, especially at times like this,” said Simon Azzam, the chief executive of Union Properties. “If a merger makes business sense due to the synergy of the two businesses and adds a genuine advantage to the company’s overall operations, brings liquidity and shareholder benefits, then we would welcome such initiatives and discussions.”
Union Properties is trying to raise finance to complete construction of a Dh1.69bn (US$460 million) Formula One theme park as part of its Dh10bn Motor City development in Dubai.
The company last week suspended construction of the park, which was about 50 per cent complete, due to a shortage of cash.
Union Properties’ shares fell 5.3 per cent to Dh0.72 on the Dubai Financial Market yesterday, its first day of trading since the suspension was announced.
The attraction was planned to open during the last quarter of this year, but has now been delayed until next year.
Plans for the 28-hectare project include roller coasters, water rides, car-racing simulators, Formula One car displays, shops, restaurants and a copy of a Formula One grid.
“We had previously arranged for financing but, unfortunately, due to the current crisis in the financial sector, those facilities have been stopped by the banks and hence we had to replan [the project],” said Mr Azzam…SOURCE
master plan and designs for its Jumeira Gardens project in Dubai to fit the market conditions, executives said Wednesday.
sector, where prices have fallen by an average of 25 per cent since their peaks last September, according to a recent report by Morgan Stanley.
