Tenants trapped in their homes

Dubai: If  PR executive Elaine D’Souza, 28, were to invite guests to her posh four bedroom villa in Mirdif, one thing is for sure. The  guests will never want to come back.

In all likelihood they will never find her house. And if they do, they will have to squeeze through a three-foot lane and put their lives at risk by brushing past a high-voltage electricity switch box. 

Her bottled drinking water company has already stopped services because of the danger and last week a pizza delivery boy couldn’t deliver an order as he couldn’t find her place.

Similar nightmare

Elaine is not alone in her despair. Two other Indian tenants at the posh Villa 6 compound on Mirdif’s 83 Algeria Street are living a similar nightmare which started with a massive excavation right in front of their villas in early May.

The earthworks will pave the way for another row of villas. But for now it has sealed their fate and, to a large extent, even their homes. “We are trapped within our own homes. I want to vacate but I can’t because there’s simply no way we can take our furniture out through that narrow passageway,” said Elaine’s neighbour Melita Rodrigues, who rented the villa for Dh95,000 in February this year because it was close to her son’s school.

“I feel cheated. If I had known, I wouldn’t have relocated here. I was better off in Al Nahda.”

Recently, Melita spent Dh9,000 to build a rockery garden on the brick pavement in front of her house. “I put my heart in it, but now it’s gone,” said the Villa 57B resident.

Melita and Elaine have also lost access to their car parks. They now use the back entrance of  a neighbouring unoccupied villa to park their cars.   “It  amounts to trespassing, but we have no choice. Every day I flirt with danger as I wriggle past that electricity switch box. I shudder to think how anybody will rescue us if there’s  a fire or accident in our house,” said a distraught Elaine, who moved here last September with her parents. 

Of late, there has been a flurry of e-mail exchanges between her and Jumeirah Sand Properties which manages the properties, but the issues remain unresolved.
As compensation for their ordeal their landlord has offered to bear 50 per cent of their Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) bills.

The tenants are not amused. They have rejected the offer and  decided to take matters into their own hands.   

“We have lost our front entrances. Our car parking has been taken away. We can’t move our furniture in or out of the house. There’s construction happening in our face.  We have been robbed of our privacy and have to contend with  noise and dust throughout the day.  Yet for all the pains, all that has been offered to us is just a waiver on our Dewa bills. This is a serious breach of contract. I am not going to take things lying down. I will do whatever it takes to fight for my rights. I will approach Dubai Municipality, rent control, even the police,” said Elaine.

But Jumeirah Sands Properties denied any wrongdoing,  saying construction has been approved by Dubai Municipality. In an e-mail statement to XPRESS, it said the “tenants of [Villa 2,3,4, 5, 6]  were aware and had agreed with the condition of future construction in front of the compound prior to signing the tenancy contract”.

The statement added the landord of the properties will meet the tenants on June 2 after he comes back from abroad.