Wages Protection Scheme

In Muscat, strike is banned in national level. To sort out labour related issues, an organization similar to our Centre of Administrative Tribunal exists. But that organization is not empowered to discuss wages or working conditions.

There is a Wages Protection System in the country. In this system, the firm employing workers, after registering with Ministry of Labour, makes an agreement with an authorized bank which credits the wages to the accounts of the workers .and issues them with ATM cards to enable them draw money. The commission for this if applicable will be borne by the company and not by the workers. By this there is a record of the payment of wages to the workers and this is under surveillance or regulation.

Exploitation of workers, underpayment etc are avoided by this system.

Fire Safety in Residences

When the fire alarm sounded in their residential apartment in Abu Dhabi earlier this month, Thomas Plant, an American military adviser for the Abu Dhabi Apache helicopter programme, wife Renata and their 15 year old son struggled through a jumble of obstacles littering the three flights of stairs down to the building’s fire exit-only to find that it was locked. Plant kicked the door open and escaped with wife and son.

Abu Dhabi’s General Directorate of Civil defense conducted fire safety audit in 5300 buildings including 1105 houses out of the total of 10000 odd buildings in the capital city.

Findings: poor fire equipment, no fire alarms, faulty central gas systems, emergency exits blockage Frequent false alarms wherever alarms were installed, resulted in people ignoring the alarms.

Design, maintenance of this important safety system and people’s response in emergency are inadequate in most parts of the world.

His Majesty's Presence Evokes Joy,Pride in Citizens

Celebrations by citizens were held at Seeh at Makarim in Wilayat of Sohar to show their joy over His Majesty Sultan Qaboos’s presence in the wilayat. Omani folk melodies were sung at the event which was held under the auspices of Sayyid Badr bin Saud al Busaidy, Wali of Sohar.

Present were officials sheikhs, dignitaries and citizens .In artistic tableaus ,citizens depicted the bond between the sons of Oman and His Majesty the Sultan their leader. They chanted the words showing their happiness over the achievements secured to them during His Majesty’s prosperous era. Citizens also renewed their allegiance and loyalty to his Majesty the Sultan. The Omani women also took part in the celebration and performed women’s traditional songs in the wilayat.

The citizens really love the Sultan. Of the many reasons one of them is when the sultan came to the throne in 1970,there were only three schools and less than 1000 students in Oman. The Sultan gave overriding priority to education since then and today there are more than 1500 schools and more than 650000 students. Here pre university education consists of 3 parts-primary, preparatory and secondary. During preparatory ,the discipline in secondary is decided. The duration of primary is of 6 years and preparatory is 2 years.

Your health is in your Hands

Like in most parts of the world,Swine Flu scare is predominant in Muscat. One round around the malls and other tourist spots here and you will see people taking utmost care and precautionary measures.

A sanitizer is invariably present all around the cities and tissues are like second skin to people here. What I learnt from the local news papers here is that they are propagating hand washing as the cheapest way of controlling diseases.

Health authorities around the world are stepping up efforts to persuade people to be more hygienic and wash their hands properly to help slow the spread of H1N1 swine flu.

Hand washing with soap has been ranked the most cost effective intervention for the world wide control of disease. It could save more than a million lives a year from diarrhoeal diseases and prevent respiratory infections –the biggest causes of child mortality.


Water does not kill germs, soap does. So don’t be a dirty soap dodger.

Courtesy: Oman Daily Observer

Weevil problem

Date farmers hate weevil. The tiny red insects do their destructive work in secret, burrowing into palm trunks and devouring a tree from within.

Infestations go unnoticed until it is too late.,when the weevils have hollowed out the trunk and the tree collapses of its own weight or is blown over by a breeze.

After intensive research ,the MoE and Water has come out with a solution. The aim of the research was to avoid using chemicals .:Using a carefully devised concoction that included pheromones and date oil that lures the pests away from the trees and into traps.The pheromones mixed with date oil and tree chips make trap more attractive than the trees from the weevil’s perspective. The insects are lured into bucket sized containers half buried in the sand in date groves where they then drown in a small quantity of water.One trap can draw weevils from 100 trees.
Courtesy: The National

Utharan

 

Utharan is a very popular serial in Colors channel now. I assume the readers of this piece watch that program. Tapasya says :Thakurai banne ka adhikar utharan me nahi miltha .Damini says; Tapasya wears the bridal dress the utharan way what Ichcha wore.Veer -Thapasya marriage takes place stealthily Tapasya camafloudged as Ichcha with the handy use of gungat. Thus Veer thinks he married Ichcha but actually he married Tapasya thanks to gungat.I do not know how the story will progress further. But what is very certain is the lives of three individuals are totally ruined –thanks to gungat.
My advice to my young friends at this juncture is do not allow gungat play with your life. Devise a x ray like mechanism to see through the gungat, establish another identity in the uncovered part of the body such as arms or to be doubly sure dare to bare the gungat. Your life is very important, baba.

Destiny with Dates

The date palm has been an integral part of UAE history providing staple food and materials for shelters and mats. Its sweet oval fruit is said to have been cultivated in the Arabian Peninsula for more than 4500 years, and the Abu Dabi island of Delma holds the earliest evidence of human consumption of dates here. But as the Emirates has modernized, so has the date evolving into a luxury treat, covered in milk chocolate and stuffed with caramelized pecans, often displayed in glass cases. There are dates stuffed with candied lemon rind or coated in white chocolate and stuffed with pistachio nuts or even used in chocolate truffles.

The dates are presented in gift boxes , akin to high end chocolates or jewellery sometimes with a brown suede finish and a satin bow or in a cherrywood box.
Date trading is something traditional in this region. The growth will come from more products to be made from dates- date bars, date juices, date energy drinks.

The fruit which is grown by 16000 farmers in the UAE as well as across the Middle East, continues to be a key food during Ramadan. Traditionally ,it is the first food eaten by Muslims to break their fast after sun set during the holy month.

Courtesy: The National

Water Water Everywhere, All the Drops to Drink

Till now I have listed three items cheaper here compared to India-petrol, cooking gas and coke. Bottled water costs twice as much as in India. The supply of water to the entire country for domestic use is by desalination.

Desalination is a power consuming process, but they have no alternative here .The water bill to the domestic user is certainly more that in India but for the standard of living here this amount is quite normal.

In my daughter’s house they have an interesting water making machine called waterex. It has a pump, refrigerator, heating coil and a ultra violet purification system. The machine operates continuously, pumping ambient air ,cooling it and condensing the water, purifying it and storing it .It dispenses cool, normal or hot water on demand. It displays the ambient relative humidity level. Normally RH here is 35%.The water collection is quite appreciable. The water is absolutely pure.

Big Boss House in Muscat

My wife, daughter and I have come to my elder daughter’s house in Muscat. Since last few days of our stay here, we are mostly in doors due to heat outside. Since we are free most of the time, we watch TV for a good amount of time-one of the favourite programmes being Bigg Boss. I used to compare us with the inmates of Bigg Boss’s house .We have no access to our favourite newspapers and magazines. We do not get calls in our landlines or mobile phones. We do not visit our usual friends and relatives as we used to do in Mumbai nor do they visit us. Whenever we want to eat, we pick up some food from kitchen and eat not always together .The house here is as big as that of the Bigg Boss’s. . The similarities end here .The dissimilarities are: We do not fight as to who should cook as my daughter does this job well in time.. There is no rationing for food and food materials.

The other favourite pastime is internet. With this not only we keep in touch with outside world, but also execute the jobs as if we were in Mumbai.

In the evening at about 5-30 we go fo a long walk towards the market area .There we saw Bombay Pharmacy, Bombay Diagnosis Centre, Bombay Sweets and Bakery.

Home Sweet Home

As I understand, my daughter’s house is situated in Muscat in an area what is known in Indian parlance upper middle class. The house is simply palatial in Mumbai standards. There is a big drawing room with an extended drawing room. Adjoining the drawing room, there is another drawing home, a concept that is unheard of in Mumbai.

The kids have a good time playing with their toys in the second drawing room. It reminds me of my ancestral house in my village which had such huge space in the centre of the house. The second wall of the inner drawing room has two entrances –one to kitchen with an annexed store room and the other to the rooms.

Needless to say that the house is well furnished and tastefully decorated. The house is completely air conditioned and there are numerous electrical household gadgets for help in the house. My immediate worry was about power cut and electricity bills. I am told that power cut is unheard of-thanks to generation of abundant power as the oil resources are unlimited. Very rare break down due to faults may occur. Just then I remembered that when my flight was just landing at Muscat airport, I saw a lot of power stations. I picked up a few old electricity bills and found that the cost of electricity is of the order of a rupee a unit.

Layout of Muscat City

The bird's view of Muscat from the aircraft just before landing  was enchanting.One side hills and the other side sea-in between the well laid out city.There were no plants on the hills-somewhat unusual sight to me who is used to seeing hills generally with greenery  in India .The hills also appeared as if laid out planned.Also something like carvings appeared on the hills when seen from above.

Here left hand driving is the norm.So people like us who are used to right hand driving have to be extra careful while crossing the road.In the long stretches of highways,trees are seen on either side-mainly neem trees.It is clear that they are planted.The efforts in terms of finance and labour in this are commendable.No stray animals are seen anywhere-absolutely none.Locals say that cats normally move around the waste storage bins.Anyway we saw none so far.

In the Shiva temple here ,the prasad to devotees is distributed in a buffet style.Those who offer eatables such as vada,curd rice or pongal to the deity,leave these items on a table just outside the shrine.The devotees help themselves.Thus devotees sitting outside the shrine in the benches after darshan  are blessed with sumptuous and varity of eatables, with the cutlery also taken care of.

Journey to Muscat from Mumbai

I left Mumbai for Muscat in the afternoon on October 10, 2009, a Saturday accompanied by my wife and daughter .It was my maiden trip to Muscat. My daughter who made a trip there last year and still very conversant with formalities in the international airport for a visitor abroad shepherded us through the counters and we willingly obliged in preference to numerous enquiries. Anyway those manning or womanning the counters were courteous and the job was interesting and quick.

On flight was also a pleasant experience with warm reception and delicious food by the airlines. The aircraft left in time and reached Muscat in time. The immigration formalities were taken care by the daughter exactly the same way as in Mumbai. (Whenever I enter Bombay, my computer flashes a message, Is it Mumbai or do you want to apologize later?)

My elder daughter, son in law and my three grand children received us in the airport. They were very happy to see us. We drove home for about 40 km. The highway stretch was like copy and paste of the first km. There were only vehicles and hardly any pedestrians .What amazed me was the scrupulous road discipline .I discovered that one can drive without blaring the horn. I have not heard the vehicle horn so far here.

We reached home, had food and spent the night talking with all of them.