Abu Dhabi municipality cracks down on salons

The Abu Dhabi City Municipality has undertaken a crackdown on beauty centers and hair-cutting salons to verify their compliance with the public health requirements in Abu Dhabi city and metropolitan districts.

This campaign underscores the vision of the Municipal System in Abu Dhabi aimed at raising the health awareness of those working in professional and occupational fields of relevance to the health and safety of the community, and at the same time educate visitors of these public facilities.

The campaign resulted in inspecting 232 hair and beauty salons where 36 expired items were detected, 3 offences were reported, 12 notices were served, and 5 previous notices were followed up. The Municipality has already received two complaints relating to hair and beauty salons from the public.

The Municipality noted that the number of items seized for breaching the specifications set for these centers indicates the high awareness level of staffs of these centers, which is a result of successful awareness campaigns and specialist workshops held by the Municipality in the past.

The Municipality commended the sense of responsibility among owners of those centers and their awareness of the hazards of these expired, fake and outlawed items and cosmetics.

The campaign reported that some of these centers used to receive some children and carry out some hair-cutting and other services; which is a clear breach of the law and conditions governing these child-related facilities. Several offences were reported about the general cleaning level at the evening, and the lack of proper cleaning of beauty tools in addition to other offences such as using expired or fake materials, lack of cleaning floors, no care made for hair tubs, improper condition of beauty of tools and poor cleaning of the place.

The Municipality intended to verify the implementation of beauty salons, centers and staffs about cleaning, and public health standards of healthy conditions as well as the inspection of children salons. It also sought to monitor Henna decorations as it has serious health impacts if outlawed materials or tools were used. The campaign also intended to inspect and monitor night exhibitions and in future it will intensify inspection and enforcement campaigns to raise the public awareness about these public facilities.

Abu Dhabi City Municipality has conducted many training courses that are intended to familiarize workers in hairdressing salons and beauty centers with the health stipulations, standards and general specifications that must be met therein. this would secure the highest protection and ensure safety and health for all community members. In coordination with qualified training institutions, the Municipality has included these standards in the training programs targeting workers in hairdressing salons and beauty centers before they could obtain their profession practicing licenses. These programmes include the standards implementation mechanism pertaining to sterilization and cleaning process, infectious diseases that might spread via soiled tools and prevention methods. He pointed out that the Municipality was keen on following up salons regularly to ensure that health and technical requirements set by Abu Dhabi City Municipality were followed in keeping with regulations and local laws governing such activity and in accordance with the world’s best practices in order to ensure the best health and safety standards and prop up the level of service offering  in such facilities.

In order to protect health and safety of all community members, the Municipality mandates all beauty salons of various activities and categories to adhere to all health requirements regarding the location of the facility and its workers. These conditions determine whether to grant the facility the license or not and play an important role in maintaining public health. Workers are also required to obtain health fitness certificates issued by the Preventive Medicine, wear standard uniform and maintain good appearance and personal hygiene.

Regulations include the precautions that must be taken when using laser and other devices that pose risk in hairdressing salons and beauty centers if used by naive and inexperienced workers or non-specialists.

The standards issued by the Municipality stipulate that the distance between chairs must not be less than 1.25 meters whereas the total area of each chair must not be less than 6 square meters. This will ensure a healthy environment for customers, prevent trespassing on the space of other customers, reduce pollution and prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

The regulations also obligate owners of hairdressing salons and beauty centers to replace curtains made of cotton or other fabric and dust-borne bacteria separating chairs with ones made of non- absorbent. easily cleaned and sterilized materials such as glass and aluminum. A study conducted by the Municipality showed that the curtains made of fabrics create a breeding ground for fungi and bacteria which are difficult to clean and disinfect. The regulations also emphasize the need to perform periodic maintenance on salons, equipment, fixtures and chairs in order to ensure they remain in good condition.

The regulations also underline the need to use non-rusting and high quality shaving tools, which must be washed, disinfected and sterilized after serving every customer. The antiseptic solutions must effective, approved and licensed and the white towels and towels must be sorted and collected in a separate container to be re-washed and pressed. The regulations also stipulated for using disposable paper neck strips, while customers must be given the option to use their own disposable tools provided that they are clean and sterile.