Driving in Qatar
You probably think I am cursing when I am talking to you on the road.
I am not.
I am saying “Your poor father! He told you about turn signals! Weren’t you listening???”
I am saying “If your mother could see your bad manners, she would be so ashamed of you!”
I am saying “Hahahahahahaha! You got your picture taken!”
Moving into my lane when I am already in it, is bad manners. Honking at me to make me let you in is WORSE manners. Didn’t you see me? Oh! Here’s a thought – did you check your side mirrors before you thought to change lanes??
Have you noticed? I let the guys in who USE THEIR TURN SIGNALS! They are communicating in a polite way. I let them in in front of me. I am nice about it.
Changes in Qatar Rent Laws
From today’s Gulf Times Qatar
New rent law seen a victory for tenants
By Sarmad Qazi
In a major victory for tenants, rent disputes can now be taken up with the Rental Dispute Resolving Committee (RDRC) regardless of whether the contract was registered or not, a senior official said yesterday.
This follows amendments in the rental law.
Law number 20 of 2009 sees changes to some provisions of the previous law number 4 of 2008 issued by HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani on October 25, the official said adding it further protected the rights of tenants in Qatar.
“There are two things in the new rule: you can come here, whether or not your contract is registered and speak to a judge, and secondly the landlord must now give at least six months notice of eviction,” the official said.
The law number 4 of 2008 was aimed at regulating the market by making registration of rental contracts mandatory and by establishing the RDRC with its own jurisdiction to take up grievances at a time of near-record inflation in the country.
“But we know the law missed out on rental contracts made prior to the 2008 law or based on goodwill and word only. In these cases we weren’t able to address any complaint,” the official at the RDRC’s headquarters in Muntazah (now Rawdat al-Khail) said.
“This amendment changes all that,” he added.
However, according to him, with the rents showing declining trends, the number of disputes is also falling; currently only 15 new cases are being filed at the RDRC every day.
The nature of cases varies from landlords wanting to hike the rent despite a two-year freeze since 2008, to non-payment claims and eviction notices.
A year ago the RDRC was registering 1,500 cases a month.
The official also dismissed questions about the effectiveness of RDRC saying so far this year its five committees have addressed and closed 1,205 cases. Only “600 or so are ongoing,” he said.
The committees have three members and one judge each.
“Yes it is true that 50% of RDRC decisions are later challenged in the appeal court (in Dafna), but 90% of the time the judge there upholds the rulings,” the official said.
Veteran lawyer Ala’a Hamad, a partner at the Arab Law Forum, yesterday said every new law requires takes time to prove its effectiveness.
“This was a new law and the more it’s practiced, it will prove its effectiveness.
“The tweaking is an ongoing process just as with foreign investment and other laws,” Hamad said.
Update on Animal Market in Kuwait
From the Kuwait edition of the Arab Times today:
Confusion on closure of animal market, need seen to set minimum standards
KUWAIT CITY, Nov 2: Conflicting reports to the Arab Times caused confusion about the shut down of Al Rai animal market. News reports said that the animals were kept as hostages within the stalls to “starve to death”.
Ayesha Al-Humaidhi, from Animal Friends League of Kuwait, assured that shopkeepers do have access to the shops and tend to their animals. “They do enter their shops and do conduct their business, but they can’t run their business openly until they settle the rent dispute with the Municipality,” she said. Al-Humaidhi explained that a number of her friends have gone to Al Rai area and had either purchased animals or animal related products. “It’s logical that if proprietors can access their shops to serve customers, they can enter the same shops to feed their animals,” she explained. She, however, pointed out that if animals kept in the stalls are lacking anything, it would be a proper flow of air.
“My friends told me that birds were the main sufferers, and that is only because of the way they are kept by the shopkeepers. “Up to 50 birds are put in one small cage which causes a relatively higher death rate amongst birds compared to other animals under normal conditions. Slower air flow had cast its toll on the poor birds,” she added.
Al-Humaidhi affirmed that the conditions in which these animals are kept were “hellish to start with”. “The shutting down of these stalls has made it worse. “However, there is a dire need to set minimal standards for shopkeepers to abide by when tending to their animals. “It’s inevitable from the reckless way these shopkeepers tend to their animals that they would not even feed them if they had no market,” she said.
Meanwhile Abu Sulaiman Al-Hadad, one of the shopkeepers, claimed that he, along with other proprietors, have not accessed their shops since these were shut down on Oct 15. “My animals have been imprisoned for more than two weeks and have all died from starvation,” he complained. Asked if he had entered his shop at all during this period he said it’s “impossible”. “If any of us is caught entering a shop we’d be obliged to pay a fine of KD 500, along with other legal action,” Al-Hadad said.
Al-Hadad said that shopkeepers have been selling some of their shop items which they managed to pick before the Municipality shut the shops. Asked about measures taken by him and or other proprietor to “rescue” their businesses and animals, Al-Hadad informed the Arab Times that a law suit has been filed to the Administrative Court. “No one knows how long it will take to be finalized. Our animals have long since choked to death,” he said.
By Dahlia Kholaif
Arab Times Staff
It seems some of the shopkeepers are keeping this story going.
Barbaric. Animals Left to Starve to Death
It’s hard to believe that this could be happening. This article is from Kuwait’s Al Watan and I learned about it from Mark, at 248am.com. Unbelievable. Unthinkable.
KUWAIT: It only happens in Kuwait. No other country would demand money from people already paying rent.
Initially, those renting stalls at the animal market in AlـRai thought it was a mistake, but when their shops were shut down “because of rent arrears,” business owners went berserk. In addition, the animals displayed in the stalls were left inside the locked stalls, with the proprietors unable to tend to or remove then, thereby what was a municipal disagreement has ballooned into an animal rights fiasco.
It remains unfathomable to many where the decision to charge a second “Municipality rent” arose from, when the proprietors were already paying rent to the owners of the commercial space, the Ministry of Finance. With the Municipality shutting down the stalls, and the Ministry of Finance staying silent ـ only to say: “this is not our issue” ـ the business owners are helpless as the animals howl and cry for food, with every passing day the stench of death growing ever stronger.
Al Watan Daily went to the animal market in Al Rai area and witnessed the disaster first hand.
Shopkeepers told Al Watan Daily that the Municipality had closed all the stalls over two weeks ago, “and they haven”t opened the doors even once till now. All the animals are inside the stalls, and most of them have died due to lack of water, food and air. These animals have been in cages within the stalls for 15 days and they have not seen any light, nor eaten anything.”
Ridha Ashkanani told Al Watan Daily: “We signed contracts with the State Properties Department; we pay them 300 Kuwaiti dinars per year, and we also have been paying KD 60 per year to the Municipality as for the cleaning of the area. We were forced to pay this sum although the Municipality is not taking care of the area and the place is not clean at all. The problem now is that the Municipality is asking us to pay another rent for the stalls themselves. They want KD 3 per every square meter within the shop per month. They also want the money to be paid in arrears from 1995. We can”t afford to pay all this, and there isn”t any law that requires us to pay a second rent to the Municipality.”
The situation is this: according to the traders, they have been paying a normal rental fee since 1997, which continued when the Ministry of Finance relocated their businesses to the current location, but in 2004, a Municipal inspector came and asked them to pay a “Municipality rent.”
The proprietors explained to the inspector that they were not aware of any second “Municipality rent,” and that according to the contract with the Ministry of Finance, the rent was to be paid to the ministry, and the ministry only.
After receipts were shown to the inspector that payments were being made to the ministry, he quietly withdrew and disappeared.
However, in 2006, another inspector came demanding “Municipality rent.” The traders explained, once again, to the new inspector the same story, to which he accepted their argument but demanded a KD five monthly surcharge for cleaning.
The traders saw no qualms with the demand and agreed to the nominal fee, but then some months later, the inspector returned, requiring that the cleaning fees be paid in lump sum six months in advance. After some grumbling, they acquiesced.
Oddly, some weeks later, traders were informed that instead of 6 months, it would have to be 12 months in advance. Again, they reluctantly agreed.
Now you have the current situation, where the Municipality has shut all the stalls with the animals locked inside, and is demanding the “Municipality rent,” in arrears as far back as 1995.
“Our major issue is that the animals are trapped inside the stalls, and most of them died. We are losing our business and losing the animals we have in the shops, and we are not allowed to open the shops at least to feed the animals, which have not eaten any food for 15 days,” explained Ashkanani
Ahmed, another proprietor, said: “I lost all the gold fish I had in the shop, worth KD 5,000. We want the animal rights societies to help us in our problem. We went to the State Properties Department and they didn”t help us, and stated that it”s not their responsibility. We then went to the Cabinet and they told us to go to the minister, and he also refused to help us. We finally went to the Municipality, (which refused to open the doors until they are paid), and now we are filing a case at the court and we are waiting to see what will happen.”
ـ
Last updated on Monday 2/11/2009
Garden Saga
This has provided us with an ongoing burble of amusement, every time we drive into our compound.
Someone wants the name of the compound in the garden. It seemed a simple enough request, doesn’t it?
The first try I saw, was a perfect ‘A’ followed by a second ‘A’. I started laughing. It was being put in by laborers who are probably illiterate in their own language, much less have any idea about western letters. To them, these are just meaningless shapes, not symbols for sounds. The second ‘A’ was gone the next day, torn out, and replaced with the appropriate letter.
But concrete blocks are big and unwieldy. When the name was finished, it was big, with no spaces between words, and no ‘s’ on the end.
They tore it out, too.
Now, working with smaller bricks, working with templates, working with a diagram, the name is finally being completed accurately. It is actually lovely, so we can’t laugh anymore.
I wonder how we would do, trying to lay out the same in Arabic . . .
Kuwait Headscarf in Qatar souks
I can only imagine this was sent to the wrong country. Qatar’s colors are a blood-brownish marron red and pure white; these are Kuwait colors on a traditional headscarf:
I found it in the Suq al Waqif.
Halloween Post Mortem
Hallowe’en is really more a cultural tradition these days than a religious event. We no longer worry about spirits walking around on Hallowe’en, and wear costumes to try to scare them away from us. In fact, many of the trick-or-treaters who came by our house last night were pretty! There were fairies, and little mermaids, and some very alluring witches.
In fact, there were so many trick-or-treaters that we ran out! How embarrassing! I thought I had a LOT, but there were more trick-or-treaters than we had treats.
It was a great evening, altogether, and next year I will know better.
Here is our not-scary pumpkin. I wish you could see the ears – it is an orange cat pumpkin, in honor of the Qatteri Cat.
All the visitors made the Qatteri Cat jumpy. He was happy to stay inside and hide with all the action in the streets last night.
Back in Traffic; How Do You Alphabetize / File?
So today I became, once again, a legal driver in Qatar, five months to the day from my arrival. Yep, for those of you who never have the joy of trying to maneuver through the complexity of getting a license in a foreign country – you have NO idea. NO idea. There are people who try and try to get a license and never do.
We are really lucky. We have some very good people who help us get things done. Somehow, it’s my turn to be lucky today.
When I showed up at the office, however, one of the HR girls told me “Oh! Flana is not here today! You will have to come back.”
You all know how nice I am. I smiled at her and said “my husband told me to be here today to get my driver’s license. Someone is going to help me.” Smile again, big smile.
Sure enough, someone is going to help me, and it is someone who I like, someone who has helped me before and who is always calm and patient and knows how to persist pleasantly until he gets what he wants from the bureaucrats. In fact, I admire him, because people end up liking to help him. He is low key. He takes me to the driver’s station, where, because of my advanced age (DO NOT ASK) I have to have an eye test. This leads me to wonder. Doesn’t everyone have to have an eye test?
Then I wait, in the special ladies’ majlis:
I had to wait quite a long time, but I was comfortable, and while I was waiting, I read all the driving safety signs they had up along the ceiling. They were all in English and Arabic, and they were great thoughts, but too many words. Like if you are reading that many words: If you are driving too fast you may not get home alive (that is not a real one, but that was the gist of most of them) so I was creating a new driving safety campaign called the equal campaign:
Speed + Texting = (shows a vehicle turned on its side and all smashed
Speed + Weaving = Two or three crunched vehicles
Texting + Driving = QR (enormous fine)
Something simple to read, graphically simple, something you can glance at and get the meaning.
When I got my driver’s license, I was really happy, except for one tiny little thing – it’s kind of my name but not exactly my name. It’s an easy mistake to make, names can be complicated, but . . . it isn’t my name on my license. It’s my face, it’s my information – it isn’t my name. For half a heartbeat, I consider saying something and then Wisdom kicks in and I zip my lip.
So then, driving home in traffic, I got to thinking about names and how we file things, alphabetically, and even Europeans sometimes file us wrong, which has led us to first class seats because airlines can’t find us, etc. It isn’t always such a bad thing.
Then I started wondering about how Arab speaking people file. Like do you have half the files in the “A” drawer, like Al So-and-So and Al Somebody Else, and how do the sun and moon words affect the filing, like Ar Rayyan, or Ath Thalaka, or As Shams, etc. Once you have filed someone, the goal is to be able to retrieve that information? How does alphabetization work in Arabic? How are things filed?
So being stuck in traffic might not be so bad if someone answers my question and I learn something. 🙂
Stuck in Traffic on Musheirib
With all the re-routing off Al Rayyan as we convert to the Heart of Doha, I found myself inching along Al Musheirib this week, along with the noon-time crowd. When there is nothing else to do – take some photos. We drive right by every day, but do we look?
Many of these spots will disappear.
Boutiques? (!)
And here is one of my favorites – see it, just over the street sign? Cheep and Best?
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