The blog in the press this week

This week's issue of 'Time Out' features a front page article on the demise of Satwa. My blog is quoted several times in the article including in a highlighted boxed section which is very exciting. Judging from the lack of new information in the article, it seems the reporters hit the same walls of silence within the Lands Department that Satwa residents have been dealing with since February. Nowhere in the article is the development company, Meraas Investment Company, named. Meraas operates under the direct supervision of Dubai ruler Shiekh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum and will be headed by Abdullah Al-Habai of the Engineer's Office. Mr Al-Habai is also a board member of Dubai Real Estate Corporation (DREC). Already contracts for parts of the new development have been awarded including for the building of the sales office. If the authorities as quoted in the article are to be believed (and that'd be a first) the final development plan has yet to be finalised. Out in the real world, the construction industry has the plans, the contracts and the names.

The Meraas company website hasn't changed in months being a single page with the ironic sentence "Our site is designed with you in mind", which is amusingly indicative of their attitute to the public - tell them nothing. Binod H. Shankar the former CFO of Dubai Waterfront Corporation is the CFO of Meraas. Vivek Rao, the Chief Executive Officer, seems to an active speaker on the Real Estate conference circuit.

I fear that to continue down the path of obliteration in the name of profit will doom Dubai to becoming just "somewhere that could be anywhere" full of million dollar ghettos. That would be a tragedy.

Satwa photos

Photos of the Satwa area and the demolition are here.

Satwa: The bland leading the blind

It's never a surprise to learn how little the authorities, in any country, actually know about what's happening in their own community is it? Even so, I was amazed by this next piece which is from the UAE Government's own General Information Authority website:

"New development makes Satwa residents anxious
(At least they got *that* right)

Dubai: Hundreds of anxious Satwa residents fear they may be evicted as their current homes are on the site of a proposed replacement project, Jumeirah Garden City.

One resident, who did not wish to be named, said rents are "ridiculous" in old buildings located in traditionally cheaper areas of neighbouring Karama and Bur Dubai.

Rents for a one-bedroom apartment now range from Dh75,000 to Dh100,000 a year and rent for a two-bedroom range from Dh95,000 to Dh130,000, with no parking facilities or balcony.

In the Barclays Bank building on Bank Street, a two-bedroom apartment is currently available for rent at a massive Dh275,000. This converts to AUD $1,550.33 per week for a flat on a busy, noisy main road.
The usual rental for a house (called a villa in Dubai) is in the region of Dh300,000+. I could be living shore front on Lake Taupo for that!!

End of contract

Affected tenants in Satwa will be given over Dh80,000 per family to help them find new housing." That's odd, some people are being offered only AED40,000 and other tenants have been offered far less.
"According to a source, tenants have until the end of their tenancy contract to leave..."Not true, despite a lease which ends in November, we were given 3 months to get out but have managed to get a further month's extension
"...and they have not been issued with eviction notices."Laughably incorrect, hard to beat the story of the new lease issued with the eviction letter pinned to the front page.

"Nationals without high income who rent in Satwa are being given new housing in the Al Quoz area."

Satwa: There one day, gone the next

The demolition of Satwa is now underway and the latest estimate is that by the time the project is complete up to 100,000 people will have been evicted. There are some photos here. Its all happening very quickly. The process seems to be that a hoarding fence is constructed around the demolition zone, then the bulldozers and trucks move in immediately and the area is flattened within days. Some of the villas that have been flattened were huge and looked quite modern. Demolition of the compound we live in starts 1st July.

Satwa: But wait there's more...

A couple of photos of the local Satwa area taken from our roof



Here's the summary so far:

Late in February the residents of our compound in Satwa, that's 18 villas and 42 apartments in all, received eviction letters giving 3 months notice to vacate. The Rent Tribunal was approached for advice, who said that the current leases had precedence and all tenants should stay put. The Dubai Engineer's Office was then approached and after several visits, the compound residents were granted a further one month's occupancy which was finally confirmed in a letter received by tenants yesterday. We have to be out by 25 June as the Engineers office advises that demolition starts 1 July. Meanwhile, in an example of either complete idiocy or complete dishonesty (and I know which way I'm leaning) the compound landlord is still issuing new 12 month leases to tenants, another just this week. Nothing however tops the story of our next door neighbour who, after handing over his cheques for 12 months rent in advance, was given a new 12 month lease with the eviction letter pinned to the front page. Ethics? What's that?

Due to some wasta* being exercised by one of our well connected neighbours, a further meeting was arranged with the boss of the person we'd been dealing with at the Dubai Engineers Office. The boss, after keeping the tenant reps waiting over 45 minutes, announced that the Satwa project had been divided into sections and then delegated within the Engineers Office and that she had nothing to do with it and the tenants had to deal with her subordinate - the man we've already been dealing with (let's call him 'Engineer Mo'). A typical pointless runaround.

Two weeks ago compound tenants received a letter from the landlord of the compound saying that compensation for tenants would be provided but demanding copies of peoples' work permits which had to be supplied the day after the letter was issued or no compensation would be paid. Not everyone has their passport which contains the work permit as some employers still, illegally, retain their staffs' passports. Those people will, I guess, have missed out.

Meanwhile in a further irritating development, Engineer Mo phoned last night to say that there was nothing further he could do as compensation had been paid to the tenants already. No, Mo! This has not happened and, while its not for me to cast aspersions, but judging purely by our landlord's demonstrated level of honesty to date, I suspect the worst ie, the authorities probably have paid the tenants' compensation, but they've paid it to the landlord and the compensation has not been passed from the landlord to the tenants to whom it is due. Happy to be proved wrong of course.

* clout, connections

Satwa: النهاية (The End)

This aerial photo by Brian McMorrow shows a small section of the area of Satwa that is being cleared and the residents evicted.

Today we've been told by the Dubai Municipality Engineer that they will give us one month's extension to the eviction notice we received on 27 February. We now have to be out by 25 June and he says that demolition starts on 1 July. He also said that we were lucky getting that long, as other people in the area have been given just a month to move and on one occasion only a week. But, how does this work? There are tenants in our block who've recently been given new 12 months leases, some as recently as last week (ours was signed only 4 months ago) but the villas are being demolished in 3 months time. Hmmmm..........

Like it or loath it, Satwa is a part of Dubai with real character and it will be so sad to see it disappear. Not to mention that its also a top spot for some types of shopping. Last night we went round to a car accessories place opposite the "356 Philipino-all-you-can-eat-for-18-dirhams" restaurant and bought two NZ (of course) sheepskin seat covers and a complete set of Prado floor mats for 500AED total.

I'll miss Satwa and the glitter shops and Ravis and the world's best mango juices from Jabal Ohod....sigh....

Satwa: The story continues

Demolition work underway in Satwa

To recap: On 25th February landlords throughout Satwa received a mandatory land clearance order from the Dubai Lands Department. On 27th February the landlord of the compound we live in issued eviction letters to all tenants (well to those tenants he thought could read Arabic, everyone else was ignored and weren't given the letter).

Our next door neighbour was out of Dubai at the time and had not be told about the evictions and had not been given the landlord's eviction letter on his return because, as he is an Anglo expat, they assumed he couldn't read Arabic. Not being aware of all this he went along to the landlord's agent last week to renew his annual lease. The neighbour handed over his 4 post dated cheques for the annual rent and was told to come back the following day to collect the lease agreement. He went back the next day and was handed a new 12 month lease agreement signed by the landlord. Pinned to the top of the lease was a letter in Arabic which the neighbour queried. He was told it was an eviction letter and he had 3 months to get out. So, in summary, the landlord had taken the neighbour's 4 cheques the previous day knowing there was a clearance order from the government on the property, had given the neighbour a new 12 month lease knowing that it isn't worth the paper it was written on and then, and this takes some beating, attached the eviction letter to the new lease. Incredible! At the beginning of this week, a family living four villas down from us was also given a further 12 month lease. The weirdest thing is that the new leases and the eviction letters are all signed by the same man. Does he have total memory loss at the times he signs the new 12 month leases? Or does he have a split personality where Nice Landlord Man doesn't know what Evil Eviction Man is doing? Or is this a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, no the right hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing? Its like a parallel universe here sometimes.

Meanwhile bulldozers are already moving into parts of Satwa to demolish houses and a whole section of houses along Al Wasl Road has disappeared, seemingly overnight. Some villas in Satwa have had large red notices pasted to their front walls from DEWA (Dubai Electricity and Water Authority) warning that at the end of the 3 month period, water and electricity supplies will be cut off. A colleague at work has one of these signs on his front wall and, as the sign is in Arabic only, he queried his landlord about it. The landlord's response was "Don't worry, I will come and paint over it. Mafi mushkella (no problem)." What clever thinking....of course.....just paint over the sign and DEWA won't notice.

Here's the latest article from the Gulf News.

Satwa: The end is nigh

We've been evicted as the entire area of Dubai bordered by the unnamed road that runs behind the Fairmont, Al Diyafa Street, Al Satwa Road and right through to the Dubai jail on Al Safa Road is being cleared. This is a stretch of land 10kms long by 2kms wide. The Dubai Department of Lands has given residents in the area 3 months notice to leave. Apparently the eviction letter was given to the Arabic residents of the compound we live in a few days ago but we weren't given a copy of the letter because it was issued in Arabic only and they thought that as expats we couldn't read it. D'uh! Did they think we wouldn't notice if we came home from work one day to find the house bulldozed? We had to ask the compound security guard for our copy which Colin scanned and I emailed to Rasha who confirmed the bad news (amusing that the Lands Dept describes it as an "evacuation"). An article from the Khaleej Times is here.

This mass eviction effects thousands of people, many of whom probably still have no idea that they are going to loose their homes in the near future. We have friends in a compound two streets over from us who've heard nothing about it and they're right in the firing line. Any Emiratis in the area who are effected by the eviction will be compensated by the Government with either cash or land on which to build a new house.

Here's an article from 7 Days that was published last Wednesday that I hadn't seen until a neighbour told me about it this morning:

"Where do we go?
Thousands of people in Satwa are struggling to find somewhere to live after being told to vacate their homes by the Land Department. The villas they live in are to be demolished to make way for the construction of a new project, but residents say they cannot find anywhere else affordable to stay. “I have no idea where to go. Rents are skyrocketing everywhere in Dubai,” said Mohammed Jaleel, an Indian who lives and works in the area. "Satwa was the ideal place for people to stay as it was centrally located and had a number of houses which were available at reasonable rent.”
Many of the residents, who are mostly bachelors, have been living in the area since the villas were constructed more than 20 years ago. With the department slapping the eviction notices on them, many residents are now running out of time to look for new accommodation. “I have a very short period to stay in the villa. After my tenancy contract ends, I have to vacate and look for a new house. Getting a house at nominal rent is difficult in Dubai,” said Farooq Ahmed, a Pakistani.
The Land Department has already begun to demolish some villas which were vacated by tenants earlier this month, although officials yesterday refused to say what would be replacing them when contacted by 7DAYS. A number of UAE nationals also reside in the area, but the Land Department has promised them they will be suitably compensated with either money or with land on which to construct a new house.
And the soon to be homeless non-Emirati residents said they could do with some help as well. “I would like the government to help us find alternative accommodation so that we can move on,” Ahmed said."

To my horror I've realised that the clearance area includes:
Ravis, the best Pakistani restaurant in the world
Jabal Ohod, the finest shawarma joint in Dubai. Not only do they produce delicious chicken and mutton shawarmas but they make wonderful mango juice too, and its all home delivered by a guy on a pushbike.

And ladies, you'd better get to Karama asap to buy your "genuine fake" handbags, because the tenants at the Karama Centre have been given 3 months notice too.

For a more corporate take on the whole situation, here's an article from MEED which parrots the development company's media release and asks no questions.