Officials from Dubai Civil Defence have said the successful training of more than one million workers has had a dramatic impact on fire prevention.
Maj Gen Rashid Thani Al Matrooshi, director general of the authority, said numbers of fires had dropped by 8 per cent between 2015 and 2018.
The force began its five-year training plan on fire safety for employees right across the emirate in 2014.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of workers have completed courses on how to prevent fires as well as how best to respond when incidents do occur.
“It’s based on international standards and focuses on safety requirements for employees of factories, warehouses, and other places,” said Maj Gen Al Matrooshi.
“The decline is a result of these trained community members dealing directly and swiftly with fires when they start, before [our] arrival."
Statistics show that members of the public helped extinguish close to 250 fires in Dubai since the training began.
“One important point is that the million trainees will help pass down information about public safety to their families which will further spread knowledge and increase awareness,” Maj Gen Al Matrooshi said.
Gender pay parity on track in the UAE
The UAE has a good record on gender pay parity, according to Mercer's Total Remuneration Study.
"In some of the lower levels of jobs women tend to be paid more than men, primarily because men are employed in blue collar jobs and women tend to be employed in white collar jobs which pay better," said Ted Raffoul, career products leader, Mena at Mercer. "I am yet to see a company in the UAE – particularly when you are looking at a blue chip multinationals or some of the bigger local companies – that actively discriminates when it comes to gender on pay."
Mr Raffoul said most gender issues are actually due to the cultural class, as the population is dominated by Asian and Arab cultures where men are generally expected to work and earn whereas women are meant to start a family.
"For that reason, we see a different gender gap. There are less women in senior roles because women tend to focus less on this but that’s not due to any companies having a policy penalising women for any reasons – it’s a cultural thing," he said.
As a result, Mr Raffoul said many companies in the UAE are coming up with benefit package programmes to help working mothers and the career development of women in general.
