When the residents of The Torch were safely shepherded out of their burning building last month, many of them might have been tempted to glance towards Tamweel Tower in nearby Jumeirah Lakes Towers. More than two years after that 34-storey building was ravaged by fire, it remains empty and repair works are yet to begin.
The two fires bear striking similarities, including the way adherence to fire safety codes meant no lives were lost in either incident. But there are also important distinctions. While residents of all but 101 of The Torch’s 676 apartments have been cleared for return by building inspectors, the damage to Tamweel Tower was more substantial, which is why none of the residents of its 160 apartments have been able to return.
As The National reported last week, there seems to be some hope that the dispute between the Tamweel Tower owners' association and the building's insurers, Arab Orient Insurance, is near to being resolved. But with repair works on the tower expected to take up to nine months, the residents will spend the third anniversary of the blaze still waiting to move back in.
All this emphasises the need for more urgency in dealing with insurance disagreements of this kind. The owners of the Tamweel Tower apartments have had to either rent elsewhere or miss out on rental income while the insurance dispute dragged on. With many of them having mortgages to pay, three years is simply an intolerable amount of time to be out of their homes.
There is a balancing act in this. Insurance companies deserve the ability to protect their interests when tens of millions of dirhams are involved. In this case, they challenged the owners’ association repair quote and the owners in turn rejected the indemnity clause demanded by the insurers before work could begin.
Delays of this kind are bad for Dubai as a city, and residents deserve a better crisis management system.
