Access issues: Tecom residents mired in sand

Public space maintenance is lacking even while construction of new buildings continues within Tecom.

Pedestrians have no choice but to walk on the road, or through the sand, when they want to get around this burgeoning residential area.

"I am an artist, and I usually paint what I find lacking in my own neighborhood: greenery!" says the 46-year-old Emirati Qais Salman Abood. "It is what everybody needs to have around them, otherwise we become depressed."

Qais can go on when asked to opine about his neighbourhood Tecom.
He came to live here about 20 years ago, when it was still spacious and quite. Now, on every inch stands a building.

Tecom here refers to Tecom C, a freezone live and work area located opposite of Dubai Media City and Dubai Internet City.

The area is currently under construction, and though buildings come to rise on a frequent level, the maintenance of its public space seems be lacking behind.

At the time of filing this report, Tecom had not yet responded to Emirates24|7’s queries.

Muheeba Yousef (25) from Nigeria is on her way to get groceries.

The Carrefour Express is relatively close to her house, it is a walking distance. However, the walking is more the problem than the distance, as her optional routes are either sand, or the busy road used by vehicles.

"It is very difficult to get around here," she says. "The apartments are very good, but the roads are terrible."

She then reaches the foothill of her destination; a large sand hill without any facilities to comfort pedestrians in reaching its top.

Muheeba will need to climb it in order to reach Carrefour, and then walk around it as the entrance is on the other side.

Worse is the situation for those who have children, claims Kinana Humsi Mardini, a 26-year-old Syrian mother of a three-year-old. "How am I supposed to get through the sand with my stroller?" she says furiously.

Every now and then, Kinana walks from the Greens, where she lives, to the Metro station at Internet City, located in Tecom.

"I love to walk, I really do not mind," she says. "But it seems that we are not expected to do such a thing. This place is not made for pedestrians."

To get to the Metro station with her stroller, she only has one option; to walk on the road.

Cars zip past her and her son at a metre distance, and honk to indicate that she is walking dangerously. Added to that, there is very little lighting, so at night she is barely visible on the road.

"I am very well aware that it is dangerous, but what else can I do? I do not have a car, and I sometimes need to go to places," she says.

Besides residents, visitors also suffer from poor infrastructure of public space as tecom houses several hotels and hotel apartments.

As Lotte Kuusynen (35) from Finland is struggling to get off the Carrefour sand hill together with her two children and full grocery bags, she can only say: "This is very strange. I'm not used to this at all."

Meanwhile, many residents in Tecom in Dubai have repeatedly complained to etisalat about no connectivity within the buildings. “We moved in to Tecom in March 2011. I was not able to get connectivity even in the balcony. Finally after several complaints etisalat did something and I am now able to get some signal, in some select locations within my apartment,” said Sangeeta T.

Many residents in the area say they were forced to change their operator to du due to etisalat’s lack of connectivity.

Tecom C is a project of Tecom Investments Entity, a subsidiary of Dubai Holding.

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