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Disabled and disadvantaged in Dubai
Disabled and disadvantaged in Dubai Amanda Fisher / 19 January 2014 Besides the My Community initiative, a lot needs to be done to make Dubai a disabled-friendly city. It took Mohammed Al Marzouqi seven years to get a job. The Emirati man, who is married with a beautiful five-year-old daughter, sunk to the depths of despair, before a government programme — and some family contacts — came through. Why the struggle in a country with a booming economy and so great a need for workers they ship most of them in? Sultan Essa, Rashid Al Marzouqi and Mohammed Al Marzouqi discuss issues faced by people with disabilities. -KT photo by Amanda Fisher “We can’t manage to find jobs, it’s very hard for us,” says the mildly intellectually disabled man, referring to people with disabilities. Mohammed, 34, speaks English with ease. He even spent a year in the United Kingdom learning the language. Since 2010 he has worked at car dealer Al Ghandi Auto, securing spare parts for customers. “I like it…sometimes I have fun (but) sometimes it’s very hard.” He says some at work treat him differently because of his disability. But he’s glad to have this job, given his doubts he was even considered for earlier jobs. “They don’t include us with the CVs, they throw them away.” As Dubai looks to position itself as a disability-friendly city by 2020, through the My Community initiative launched last November by Shaikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince and Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council, there are many steps to be taken — the most important of which, according to 28-year-old Rashid Al Marzouqi, is in the mind. “I think it’s doable, but we need more accessibility and we need to change the mindsets of people…also for parents to let their disabled children (integrate in society), not isolate them.” The young Emirati, who has cerebral palsy, is uniquely positioned. He works for the Community Development Authority’s (CDA) Al Kayt programme — named after a traditional Emirati rescue boat — as a Community Care Executive, helping place people like Mohammed in jobs. People with disabilities are often treated like children, he says. “The way that some people talk it’s like talking to a child, or some people will stare at you. I want people to think about the abilities and not the disabilities, and to give them the same rights as they would give any other human being.” He says employers should remain open-minded about hiring those with disabilities, especially intellectual disabilities. “People with intellectual disabilities are good at organisational skills — just give them a chance.”Bizarrely, some with disabilities are too qualified for roles. “It’s difficult for the highly-qualified to find work because the jobs they want people with disabilities to do are very limited, like maybe in a contact centre. We have a few on our website that are very qualified…and it’s very difficult for us to get them jobs.” The astute young man, who adopts the role as translator during our interview for those whose English falters, acknowledges he has been lucky. He began working at the CDA as an intern while still at the Dubai Centre for Special Needs. Three months later, in May 2010, they offered him a job. The eldest of three boys and two girls, Rashid says his family is very supportive. While not married yet, he hopes one day to have a family of his own. Turning Dubai into a disability-friendly city will require action across different government sectors. “There are a lot of services that need to be implemented to make Dubai disability-friendly (including) the laws. Places in Dubai should be accessible for people with disabilities, also…the health system and education system (need work).” A major impediment for disabled job-seekers, is that special needs education centres do not offer any accreditation or graduation certificates. “The certificates they give you are a report at the end of the year, but it’s not recognised by the Ministry (of Labour)…(before this job) I contacted one or two companies…by the time they hear you don’t have a certificate, they finish the call.” But Zahra Al Balooshi’s resume glitters; she has worked in four different jobs over 17 years. In two weeks she will gain a bachelor’s degree in Human Resources and Business, to add to her Higher Diploma in Human Resources. The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority senior executive, who works in the metering and equipment section, has worked previously for United Bank Ltd, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, and Dubai International Financial Centre, in spite of a paralysis on the left side of her body. “Before I started work I was really shy, I was sitting at home…and not dealing with people very much. When I started working I was still shy but after some years I encouraged myself to change my attitude, everything.” Working has even changed how she views herself. “I do not see myself as special needs. I’m like other people, I don’t have any problems…I have more opportunities (even), better than people (without disabilities). They don’t have the future we have.” The 40-year-old says triumphing over her disability means she is better equipped than most to deal with challenges and keep an open mind — she is hungry to learn and always asks supervisors for more work. “I don’t think to go shopping or go out with friends, I’m always looking to improve myself and do better for myself…I don’t miss anything, I’m not less than anyone.” Regular physio has even helped her regain movement. While attitudes toward disabilities have improved over the years, Zahra says there is a long way to go. She wants more schools for disabled children and funding to help with medical bills. Another Emirati, Sultan Essa, is worried about his future job prospects. The 26-year-old, who has muscle atrophy, says it took two years to get a job. “I think it’s because I’m a person with disabilities, and also my English is only a little.” Sultan, who completed Grade 9 at Dubai High School, says at times he worried he would never get a job. His Dubai Airport Free Zone Authority clerk job came through the Al Kayt programme several years ago. While he feels as qualified as anyone for a promotion — which he is yet to get — “the community is closed. They think that because I have a disability I will need lots of days off”. Sultan says he works on off days just to prove himself. “I love my job but I want new challenges and responsibilities… I do the same job as other people whose title is (better).” He also wants employers to support disabled staff to study further. “People with special needs are usually late with their education…so when we’re in our jobs we have the money and we want to continue education, but we don’t have the time.” The Dubai local is a keen sprinter, but improving accessibility and attitudes for people with disabilities is more likely to be a marathon. In the past three years, the Al Kayt programme has placed 50 people with disabilities in jobs — but there are still 140 on their list. My Community Dr Bushra Al Mulla, Director of the CDA’s Dubai Early Childhood Development Centre, says ‘My Community’ has crucial backing from His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, which means all government departments must get in line with several years-old laws enshrining rights for the disabled. The five core ‘My Community’ pillars are: (1) to prepare a draft regulation that will compel all sectors to undertake disability-friendly modifications like wheelchair access; (2) establish a hotline to report negligence and discrimination; (3) develop services for people with disabilities, such as leadership training programmes; and (4) make government departments conversant in sign language as well as (5) braille. However, until the regulation is passed — expected sometime this year — there is no legal basis for the Dubai Municipality to force private entities to become disability-friendly. “In seven years we have to have a full plan on how to implement other things than just these five.” The CDA is already meeting with NGOs and others in the sector, which has highlighted a major problem — a severe shortage of professionals qualified to teach and rehabilitate the disabled. “Specialist services, like speech therapy and occupational therapy, are lacking in the UAE, we always bring them from outside…we have to create new (tertiary) programmes and build our own capacity.” Al Mulla acknowledges there needs to be more early intervention, while all sectors, such as health, education and social services, must work to provide an integrated model. When a disabled person reaches 18, the age of school end, services also end. “There is a gap…after 18 the centres have to graduate them and they go back into their homes.” Al Mulla says the authority will work with the Ministry of Education to implement accredited equivalent educational programmes or modified curricula into special needs education, so work opportunities open up. The CDA’s vision also includes training families of disabled children to ensure discrimination does not start in the home — “children (are often) excluded at home if the family does not have the right tools”. If Dubai is to truly become a disability-friendly city, between now and 2020 there must be efforts both from the top down and the bottom up to ensure “My Community” becomes more than just lip service. amanda@khaleejtimes.com For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Pellet Production In Wisconsin’s North Woods
By Tim Portz | September 23, 2013 A bit more than an hour north of the college town of Eau Claire, Wis., sits Ladysmith, the county seat of Wisconsin’s Rusk county. Nearly 30 percent of the county’s workforce of about 8,000 people makes a living in the manufacturing sector and, with 80,000 acres of forest land in the county, the forest products industry plays a vital role in the area’s economy. In 2009, looking to maximize on the area’s significant wood fiber assets, Illinois-based Indeck Energy Services Inc. broke ground on a pellet facility sized to produce nearly 90,000 tons of wood pellets annually when running at maximum capacity. Initially eyeing the area for the development of a biomass power plant, Indeck Energy Services and minority equity partner and feedstock aggregator Midwest Forest Products Co. pivoted their plans and brought this facility online to begin producing pellets in July 2009. Utilizing about equal portions of the area’s abundant sawmill residuals and whole round logs, the facility operates largely on hardwood fiber streams. “Predominantly what we are using is mixed hardwoods. The majority is medium- to high-density hardwoods. That includes red oak, hard maple, soft maple, ash and birch,” notes Darren Winchester, quality control manager at the plant. Feedstocks drive the facility’s final product quality, Winchester continues. “One good way to look at quality is consistency and the consistency does start on the front end. For us, we maintain a product recipe that calls for a certain percentage of our various wood species.” The facility’s wood yard is arranged into logical zones—evidence of its ability to accept and process both whole round logs and sawmill residuals. Whole round logs are received, debarked and fed into the facility’s 600 horsepower chipper. The chips are sorted by species by the yard’s radial stacker and the bark is sold to nearby boiler operators. While the Btu from the bark could be put to use on the premises to power the dryer, the air permit required to burn this higher moisture content material makes that option impractical. Instead, the plant utilizes about 10 percent of its dried furnish (wood fines) to run the dryer. Pellets are bagged and stacked on pallets for delivery to the plant’s significant roster of dealers. “There are more than several hundred outlets in the Midwest that carry our product, from various big boxes to a lot of independent and private dealers like wood yards and small mom and pop hardware stores. So there is a myriad of outlets for our product and we’re certainly always looking to increase that number,” reports Nunzio Maniaci, business development manager. The plant covets the growth opportunity afforded by landing critical bulk delivery customers. “Our bulk customers are some schools and municipal buildings that have pellet appliances that allow them to heat their facility by burning pellets. There aren’t too many of those and it is not growing fast enough, probably, to suit us,” Nunzio says. The plant is well-positioned to service bulk customers, being unique among Midwestern pellet facilities in boasting onsite rail access. Ideally, the facility would locate a utility deploying biomass cofiring to drive some major demand. The plant had some early traction in this effort and, Nunzio reports, “we had one test two years ago with a large utility here in Wisconsin that burned a large number of tons of pellets.” Those tests, however, never progressed beyond test fires and Nunzio is skeptical of near-term domestic utility demand for wood pellets saying, “That market just doesn’t seem to be maturing right now.” Not surprisingly, the entire management and operations team at Indeck are closely watching the maturing market for wood pellets in Western Europe, led by the demand from power plants in the United Kingdom. Moreover, foreign pellet buyers are reaching out to Indeck. “We get requests daily from them for large amounts of pellets to go different places: Italy, Germany, Sweden, and the U.K., specifically,” Nunzio says. “But we haven’t been able to get over the price hurdle, yet. Demand keeps going up and we think that will drive the price up and eventually we are going to get there.” Until that day, the team at Indeck Ladysmith LLC will continue to produce high quality pellets for their domestic buyers. Author: Tim Portz Executive Editor, Pellet Mill Magazine 651-398-9154 tportz@bbiinternational.com Continue reading
US House approves one-year ‘Obamacare’ delay in bill
House Republicans defy Obama; shutdown nears (Reuters) / 29 September 2013 The US House of Representatives on Sunday, ignoring a White House veto threat, approved a one-year delay in funding major provisions of President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law as part of a government funding bill. The House of Representatives early on Sunday brought the federal government closer to a shutdown as it voted to delay President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law for a year as part of an emergency spending bill. By a mostly partisan vote of 231-192, the Republican-controlled House approved the ‘Obamacare’ amendment, despite a veto threat from the White House. It also voted 248-174 to repeal a medical device tax that aims to help fund healthcare programs under the 2010 law. And in a sign that lawmakers might be resigned to a government shutdown beginning Tuesday, the House unanimously approved a bill to keep paying US soldiers in the event the government runs out of money to run many programmes. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reiterated on Saturday that the House bill would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate, which is not scheduled to meet until 2 p.m. on Monday. Obama also threatened to veto any bill that delays his healthcare restructuring. There is a slight chance the two sides could reach a funding deal before the government’s fiscal year ends at midnight on Monday. Congress could also act at any time to end the impasse if a shutdown did occur. But the bitterness of the House debate on Saturday night that spilled into early Sunday did not bode well for prospects of a compromise. “You have been hijacked by a group called the Tea Party,” Democratic Representative David Scott of Georgia said angrily, referring to the powerful conservative, anti-government movement that holds significant sway over Republicans. “The American people deserve to have time to see what this monstrosity will do before it is implemented,” shouted Republican Representative John Culberson of Texas, referring to ‘Obamacare.’ The high-stakes manoeuvring between Democrats and Republicans is likely to continue through much of Monday. The standoff is also a harbinger for the next big political battle in Washington: a far more consequential bill to raise the federal government’s borrowing authority. Failure to raise the debt ceiling by mid-October could result in the government defaulting on its obligations. Medical device tax The funding impasse is the culmination of more than three years of failed conservative efforts to repeal ‘Obamacare,’ a programme aimed at extending health insurance to millions of those without coverage. Republicans argue that ‘Obamacare’, which is set to launch on October 1, is a massive and unnecessary government intrusion into medicine that will cause premiums to skyrocket and damage the economy. Failure to pass a funding bill would close down much of the government for the first time since 1996. More than a million federal employees would be furloughed from their jobs, with the impact depending on the duration of a shutdown. The current timetable could leave House Speaker John Boehner with the most difficult decision of his career: whether to approve a straight-forward spending bill passed on Friday by the Senate or allow the government shutdown to begin. Neither side wants to be the last to cast the final vote that would lead to a shutdown, a concern that has turned the funding measure into a hot potato tossed between the two chambers. While polls consistently show the American public is tired of political showdowns and opposed to a shutdown, House conservatives were jubilant about the fight. “This is a win-win all the way around,” said Republican Arizona Representative Matt Salmon, who described the mood of Republicans before the vote as “ecstatic.” Republicans and a handful of Democrats also approved an amendment to the bill repealing a tax on medical devices that helps fund the healthcare law to the tune of about $30 billion. That provision, sought with heavy lobbying by the medical device industry, has been supported in the past by some Democratic senators. In a government shutdown, spending for functions considered essential, related to national security or public safety, would continue along with benefit programmes such as Medicare health insurance and Social Security retirement benefits for seniors. But civilian federal employees – from people who process forms and handle regulatory proceedings to workers at national parks and museums in Washington – would be temporarily out of work. The last government shutdown ran from December 16, 1995 to January 6, 1996, and was the product of a budget battle between Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republicans, led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. Republicans suffered a public backlash when voters re-elected Clinton in a landslide the following November, a lesson never forgotten by senior Republicans, including Boehner. This time, Boehner tried to avoid a showdown but was overruled by his rebellious caucus, largely influenced since the 2010 election by newcomers endorsed by the Tea Party. While Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the top House Republicans, worked behind the scenes, they did not deliver floor speeches in support of the bill – something they often do on major legislation. Instead, some of the House’s most conservative members who drove the ‘Obamacare’ delay effort, dominated the debate. With Boehner effectively sidelined, rank-and-file Republicans boasted of their unity. Members chanted, “Vote, vote, vote, vote,” in their closed-door meeting, they reported later. Afterward, Democratic Representative Louise Slaughter of New York, took to the House floor to accuse Republicans of throwing a “temper tantrum” about ‘Obamacare’ under pressure from ‘Tea Party extremists.’ Conservative and liberal groups, from the Tea Party to women’s rights organisations, have been cashing in on the showdown over ‘Obamacare,’ using it to rally supporters and raise money for next year’s congressional elections. Continue reading
