When Dubai dreams turned sour

ALTHOUGH THE Dubai debacle has eased on financial markets, due to the surrounding Emirate States going guarantor for debt, the property crash will be felt long and hard.

And there will be vindication for those who, years ago, expressed doubt about the entire enterprise, often in the face of concerted lobbying from vested political and oil interests.

One Irish developer (prefers not to be named) responded to strong inducements from Dubai by sending two of his project managers who advised: “Don’t touch with a barge pole!”

Thus warned the Kevin Street-trained surveyors. Apart from the inflated prices of artificially-created islands of rock in the Gulf stream, they asked: Who will be the buyers of hundreds of thousands of apartments in blocks rising over 100 storeys? If we invest, will our only sales be to other investors – are there enough of them? As their scepticism is vindicated, our source also reminds us of the appalling treatment of Indian construction workers during the Dubai boom. Working long shifts, incurring injuries and fatalities without adequate compensation, with no legal redress other than to the privileged sons of oil sheikhs, some of the massive “Needles in the Sky” are monuments to medieval attitudes and squandered oil revenues.

Benefits of the boom, like that of the oil, did not trickle down to much of the Emirate populations. As for some “celebrities” who “bought” properties at a discount in return for lending their names to the PR campaign, our source finds it hard to be sympathetic: “Their apartments are worth about 60 per cent less than originally, I can give them a cup of tea, if it will do any good.”