Posted on 01/24/2009 5:39:10 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Indians flee Dubai as dreams crash
Mumbai/DUBAI - JAN 14: It's the great escape by Indians who've hit the dead-end in Dubai.
Local police have found at least 3,000 automobiles -- sedans, SUVs, regulars -- abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the last four months. Police say most of the vehicles had keys in the ignition, a clear sign they were left behind by owners in a hurry to take flight.
The global economic crisis has brought Dubai's economic progress, mirrored by its soaring towers and luxurious resorts, to a stuttering halt. Several people have been laid off in the past months after the realty boom started unraveling.
On the night of December 31, 2008 alone more than 80 vehicles were found at the airport. "Sixty cars were seized on the first day of this year," director general of Airport Security, Mohammed Bin Thani, told DNA over the phone. On the same day, deputy director of traffic, colonel Saif Mohair Al Mazroui, said they seized 22 cars abandoned at a prohibited area in the airport.
Faced with a cash crunch and a bleak future ahead, there were no goodbyes for the migrants -- overwhelmingly South Asians, mostly Indians - just a quiet abandoning of the family car at the airport and other places.
While 2,500 vehicles have been found dumped in the past four months outside Terminal III, which caters to all global airlines, Terminal II, which is only used by Emirates Airlines, had 160 cars during the same period.
"The construction and real estate industry has been hit following the global slowdown and the direct fallout is that professionals working in the realty industry are rapidly losing their jobs," said a senior media professional, in-charge of a realty supplement in Dubai. "In fact, my weekly real estate supplement usually had 60% advertisement and ran into 300-odd pages. In the last seven weeks, it's down to 80 pages and with fewer advertisments," he added.
Mumbai resident D Nair (name changed) had been living in a plush highrise in Sharjah for the past four years. However, the script went horribly wrong when his contract was terminated. Nair used all his credit cards to their maximum limit, shopping for people back home. He then discarded his Honda Accord before returning to India for good. Nair, who stays in a rented apartment in Navi Mumbai today, has a Rs15 lakh loan with a Dubai bank.
Another such victim of the meltdown said he bid goodbye to his car in a small bylane near the airport and hailed a cab. "I was scared because a number of us were doing the same and did not want to be questioned by the police. There was no way I could afford to pay the EMI of 1100 Dhirams for my Ford Focus," he told DNA on condition of anonymity.
When contacted, the dealer for Asgar Ali cars in Sharjah said, "We are helpless and do not know how to tackle this issue. A large number of such owners are from Indian, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other South Asian countries."
Ping!
>Several people have been laid off in the past months after the realty boom started unraveling.
? Several people, huh?
LOL. I caught that, too. The joy of writing on Internet: no time for proof-readers.:-)
Massive layoffs...eh? :)
Tsk Tsk Tsk — How sad :)
Wait a minute. Do I understand this correctly: These Indians are running up ridiculous debts in Dubai and then skipping out of town when they lose their jobs and I’m supposed to feel sorry for them?
haha..that’s funny because an Indian guy who lived in my building just fled the country because he owes the IRS tons of money. Before he left, he told the land lord his place was clean etc. And of course the guy didn’t pay his last months rent and wanted to use his deposit for the rent (that’s illegal to do in Cali from what I understand).
So, when the landlord goes into his apt, it’s a total mess. crap thrown everywhere like it’s been ransacked by burglars. I was told he is going to Kuwait. God help him.
Abu Dhabi and Doha (Qatar)are going strong, though. Tripoli, Libya is another place that has a healthy construction business at the moment.
The emirate's revenues are from trade, real estate and financial services. Revenues from petroleum and natural gas contribute less than 6% (2006)of Dubai's US$ 37 billion economy (2005). Real estate and construction, on the other hand, contributed 22.6% to the economy in 2005, before the current large-scale construction boom. Dubai has attracted worldwide attention through innovative real estate projects and sports events. This increased attention, coinciding with its emergence as a world business hub, has also highlighted human rights issues concerning its largely foreign workforce
Well, at least 3,000 plus passengers. I guess that could be several. What's a regulars?
No pity here either. I'm wondering what kind of hits the American CC companies are taking as the illegals here do the same thing. Love to see BofA take a major blow since they promoted acceptance of Matriculas so they could get cards, loans, etc. I half expect screams of "racism" as those companies REALLY cut limits on those with Hispanic surnames.
I weep for Dubai, one of the greatest nations, nay, CIVILIZATIONS, that the Earth has ever seen.
“...Rs15 lakh loan with a Dubai bank.”
A lakh is 100,000. So this amount is 1,500,000 Rupees. At the exchange rate of 1 Rupee = 0.0204 US Dollars, this is $30,600. A significant sum based on Indian wages.
I remember watching the show on the artificial islands they made in the gulf. They spoke with the emir and he said something that kind of stuck........they were going for the tourism dollars as the “oil revenue” would run out by the year 2016.........:o)
The expatriates there as the foreign workers are called are sponsored by locals. The expats must pay a percentage of their income to their sponsor . If these folks were laid off then they no longer had a sponsor and were thus thought of as illegals.
Better to leave than be put in chains , lose all they had to their sponsor and still be deported.
Normal life over there as I saw it for a few years !
Stay safe !
When you rent to people from out of the country you assume they will skip out on the last month’s rent. If they don’t, you’re pleasantly surprised.
I seem to remember a fascinating article posted here on FR back in 2006-07 about Dubai's "real estate boom." From what the article said, much of Dubai's economy was nothing more than smoke and mirrors -- built on an enormous run-up in real estate prices fueled by a massive influx of U.S. cash into the nation. And by that I mean real cash (i.e., real estate transactions conducted with bags of U.S. currency) . . . much of which could be traced to payments that had been made to defense contractors and Iraqi tribal leaders over the last few years.
There's a reason why the U.S. government stopped reporting the M3 measure of money supply back in 2005, folks.
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