Still no homes for residents of Al Adla

Ali Abdul Hakim, 19 oversees the renovations of his family's new home in Al Falah.

ABU DHABI // Scores of people whose houses in the village of Al Adla are due to be demolished are still waiting to move, two months after they were given the keys to new homes in a nearby town. Electricity connections to the replacement homes in Al Falah were delayed, stalling maintenance work and forcing an extension of the mid-September deadline for the Emirati families to leave. Power bills for the houses in Al Falah, some of which run into the thousands of dirhams, were racked up by previous tenants who did not settle their accounts before they left.

Officials at Abu Dhabi Municipality, which is overseeing relocation of the Al Adla families, said all of the previous accounts should have been paid and electricity restored to the houses. However, some of the people waiting to move said it had taken weeks to set up new accounts. "We can't even start our renovations without electricity, let alone move in," said Abu Baker Bani Hashem, 42. Mr Bani Hashem, who retired in August, said he had been looking forward to spending time in his house in Al Adla, but he was told that his home was among 25 to be demolished.

Rising groundwater and excessive salinity had caused extensive structural damage to the three-year-old Government-issued houses. Five of the condemned Al Adla homes have already been demolished, and 20 more are scheduled to be taken down after the families move. Under a government programme, all Emiratis are given houses or plots of land. The families were allocated houses in Al Falah by Abu Dhabi Municipality, but the old tenants left the houses in disrepair.

"If the electricity bills were Dh200 (US$55) or Dh300, it would be no problem. We would have paid, but the bill for my house is Dh2,700," said Ahmed al Hammadi, another resident who is waiting to move. "I am losing my house in Al Adla and then I have to pay for someone else's electricity too?" Salem al Maameri, director of municipal services in Abu Dhabi, said the electricity issue had now been resolved and that the new owners should bear "no responsibility" for the outstanding bills.

Most of the maintenance work on the replacement homes in Al Falah is finished, but the residents need more time to decorate their new houses, Mr Maameri said. Relocation now is not expected to be complete for another two months. "We will see a lot of movement on this subject this month," he said. Mohammed Abdul Hakim, whose family of seven is among those being relocated, said he did not understand why it was taking so long to settle the electricity accounts and finish the maintenance work.

"The houses are in a bad condition in Al Falah. They said they'll do the maintenance but we still have to spend probably Dh1 million just to renovate and develop this house," said Mr Abdul Hakim, 21, whose father owns the home. "I told my father that we should just buy a new flat, but he told me to just be patient." The Bani Hashems are among the many families who invested hundreds of thousands of dirhams on renovating their homes in Al Adla, a village of 100 houses 60km outside the capital. There is still no information on what compensation can be expected.

Mr Maameri said the issue of compensation was still "under review", but that the families definitely "deserve something". [e-mail]