Almost 90 per cent of Dubai Municipality’s services will be accessible online by August of this year, according to Hussain Nasser Ahmed Lootah, acting director general of Dubai Municipality.

As part of the emirate’s wider drive to e-government, the municipality already has some 300 of 400 total services and facilities online at present with the remaining “very simple” services coming on line over the next few months.
“We have about 101 services offered within the building services department and we have announced that 42 of these services are online now,” says Lootah. “The consultant submits his requests at any time now – 24/7 – and we integrate with him through the system. By next month, even the drawings will be submitted through the system,” Lootah continues.
The aim is for the municipality’s clients and customers to have zero necessity to visit its offices, with everything online, including e-payments.
As Lootah rightly points out, this will be a big achievement for e-government and the municipality. “By the time we complete all these services, we hope that there will be zero visits to us because everybody can integrate with us through the system. A lot of our clients are contractors, consultants and companies, they cooperate with us and we train them to use the system. We have conducted hundreds of training sessions with these people and they are very happy right now as they are saving a lot of time and money on transportation etc.”
Lootah sees the role of the municipality as being the “face” of the city in providing the shape and direction of how the city looks and operates, by offering an impressive range of services and facilities dealing with the full range of issues facing the residents and corporate entities of Dubai – operational, planning and regulatory requirements, to name a few. The emphasis is very much on service and dealing fairly, quickly and openly with the municipality’s “customers”.
As he says: “Our municipality has 23 different departments and every department has a number of divisions and sections, so we have a huge umbrella providing many different functions to serve the needs of individuals and companies in Dubai.” The needs and sophistication of services are constantly changing and improving: “For every service we offer, we have to provide quality, a fast response and clear requirements. By giving these to a developer, for example, or even an individual, we can try to ensure that they can process the requirements easily. Lootah sums up the process proudly, “People say that Dubai is going so fast, but there is a lot behind it to make it go fast.”
So where is this speed of development taking Dubai? Is there a finishing point in five or even 10 years? Lootah is profound: “We are in a competition and because of that, there is no end, especially with Shaikh Mohammed leading us.”
“This means we have to keep going, to provide the quality and the uniqueness. We have a vision formed from the government but also private individuals. They are launching a lot of projects and these projects all have special features. We, as a service organization, must cooperate and make them comfortable so that what they are providing us will be successful. There are a lot of things in the pipeline and this all about team work not individual work”
In considering the major challenges facing the municipality, Lootah belies that the maintenance of the high standards already set is most important. “The challenge is to maintain the quality of the numerous services we are providing now. For example, the city of Dubai is one of the cleanest in the region and there is a huge team responsible for that.”
Other specific examples he gives is the quality of the beautification and landscaping projects. As he says, “If you drive around and see the flowers you will not believe you are in the desert!”
But there is a pragmatic edge to this with the irrigation water used to support these beautifications coming from non-hazardous wastewater. The treatment of general waste, medical waste and sewerage all fall under the responsibility of Dubai Municipality. Sewerage is a very important part of infrastructural planning and environmental protection, not only in the removal of foul water but also in reusing it. The municipality is treating 300,000 cu m of sewage every day and has been working for several years on an irrigation water network using this water to cover the whole city. The municipality is now completing a huge new and unique water treatment and irrigation project in the Al Awir, close to the agricultural areas around Al Khawaneej.
The municipality also plays a huge role in planning the social and physical infrastructure of Dubai: “Dubai is a free town with a lot of nationalities. We also have to cope with and provide the services for those nationalities like shopping centres, play areas, industrial areas and business districts.”
Dubai works in close cooperation with other government agencies such as the recently-formed Road and Transport Authority (RTA) and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa). A notable example is the cooperation between the RTA, which has been hived off from the municipality into a separate regulatory body, and the municipality in planning the road network and transport solutions to deal with Dubai’s increasing traffic loads
As Lootah says, “There is a lot of discussion about the traffic in Dubai. It is not just a matter of making more roads as you cannot cover the city with roads, so we are working with the RTA on a new transport system – the Metro, which is under the RTA but we prepare the plans and provide them with the locations for the stations and the routes – all that comes under our planning department.”
Another important aspect of the social infrastructure of Dubai and the municipality is the provision of housing for UAE nationals. Currently there are three types of plans that the municipality is pursuing along with other Dubai and federal government entities. The first involves the allocation of land to residents of Dubai who can take the land and then build a house on it themselves. The second is the building of standardised low cost housing. The third plan is a new type of project initiated by Shaikh Mohammed whereby the government will build a number of different designs and sizes of houses that residenst may choose to buy with very low interest loans provided by the government.
In spite of all of the rapid development that Dubai is undergoing, Lootah is very keen to preserve and perhaps even enhance the historic character of Dubai, particularly the old suq areas in Deira: “I remember when the second shopping centre opened in Dubai and people were afraid that the business would move to these new places. Now we have many more shopping centres and huge malls, but the suq is “the suq” – the identity, classification of the suq and type of trade is different in each one. Anyone can go to the shopping centre, but in the suq the environment is different!”