Dubai: Residents who have not been charged for housing fees yet will soon have to pay for it as Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) plans to include all areas they had missed earlier, a Dubai Municipality official said.
“We have covered all the areas in Dubai to be included for housing fees. However, we have noted that in certain areas some accounts have slipped through us and therefore these people have not been billed for housing fees so far. We have asked Dewa to run the system again and identify these accounts in order to start levying housing fees. Those not paying housing fees will soon start paying them,” said Abdullah Hashim, Fees & Revenue Officer, Finance Department, Dubai Municipality.
Calculation
The official’s statement came in response to an XPRESS enquiry on why all Dubai residents were not charged housing fees.
For a leased unit, the housing fee is currently five per cent of the rent. For a property owned, the housing fee is five per cent of the rental index value of the property. “We feel that basing housing fees on rent is the way to calculate it. If the rent is higher, the housing fee will also be higher and vice versa. As regards a property owned, again the rental index value gives an indicative price of a unit in a particular area. It is not always practical to get the rent of each and every unit. Therefore basing housing fees on rents and the rental index is appropriate,” he said.