Lhe United Arab Emirates has allocated $544 million to repair citizens’ homes damaged by the unprecedented torrential rains that hit the Gulf country, their Prime Minister announced on Wednesday.
“At today’s Council of Ministers, we approved an amount of 2 billion dirhams (approximately 544 million dollars) to repair the damage caused to the homes (…) of citizens,” wrote X Sheikh Mohammed on his account bin Rached al-Maktoum, after the floods which left at least four dead last week – three Filipinos and an Emirati – and paralyzed a large part of this rich oil country.
A ministerial committee was tasked with identifying the damage caused to housing and paying compensation, while another was tasked with “identifying the damage caused (…) to infrastructure and proposing solutions and measures at the level of the State,” he said.
“We have learned great lessons on how to manage heavy rains in our developed cities (…) We are better prepared for the future,” also estimated the Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, one of the emirates of the federation most affected by the torrential rains of April 16.
The desert country recorded nearly two years’ worth of rainfall in one day that day.
In Dubai, several residential neighborhoods and roads were flooded, contrasting with its image as an ultra-modern city.
The emirate’s airport, one of the busiest in the world, had to cancel more than 2,000 flights, only returning to normal activity on Tuesday, a week after the storm.
The extent of the damage and disruption has sparked some rare criticism in the country.
“We must recognize (…) that there has been an unacceptable deficiency and collapse of services and crisis management,” Emirati analyst Abdelkhaleq Abdallah wrote on X on Wednesday. “We hope that this will not happen again not in the future,” he added.
For climatologist Friederike Otto, it is very likely that these rains, which also affected other Gulf countries, “were made stronger by man-made climate change”.
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