Deadline looms for weight in gold challenge

The deadline for the ‘Your Weight in Gold’ campaign will be this Thursday, and organisers Dubai Municipality have already registered 15,000 people.

An entrant checks his weight at registration for Your Child in Gold, this year’s version of the Your Weight in Gold competition. Jaime Puebla / The National

DUBAI // Dieters have three days to register for the chance to swap kilograms of weight for grams of gold.

The deadline for the Your Weight in Gold campaign is Thursday, and organiser Dubai Municipality has already registered 15,000 people.

Registrations are up on last year, when 10,000 people signed up in July but only 3,224 made it to the end a month later on August 20.

The authority paid out around 16.872kg of gold in last year’s campaign, costing at the time, about Dh2.6 million.

Ismail Al Banna, director of corporate marketing department at Dubai Municipality, said that although the authority had hit its target of 15,000 applicants, registrations would continue until July 24 as there was an “open budget”.

“Since we aspire to be the number one in everything we do, we wish Dubai to be one of the healthiest cities in the world, and we need all our citizens and residents to be aware of our aims,” he said. “We believe that the people are the real assets of our city, so we take care of their health to build a beautiful future for our beloved city.”

The minimum to lose over the campaign will be 2kg. Individuals will get a gram of gold per kilo lost, while people who register as families will get two grams per kilo.

The final weigh-ins will be on September 10 to 15, although participants will be notified when and where they need to do the weigh in.