Marina tenant woes: No AC in Dubai for 43 days, and counting
Tenants have tried numerous ways to cope, like buying additional fans and coolers
Dubai: Forty-three days with no proper air conditioning during the summer in Dubai is too long to bear. Yet this is what residents of the Marina Crown Tower in Dubai Marina have been grappling with since July 28.
Two out of the three chillers supplying air conditioning to the 52-storey tower broke down in July. The building management, residents said, have been trying to fix the problem but has had no significant progress yet.
Residents have had it and they are desperate for a solution.
“Forty-three days in this heat is too much. Nobody listens to us, nobody wants to do anything,” Nargiz Chalangova, a salon owner at the building, told Gulf News. “They have promised us so many times that they’d fix it ‘tonight, next week, and next week again.’ But how do I know if they are telling the truth?”
The resident said the air conditioner problem has badly affected not only her business but also her staff.
“All my products are melted. We hardly have any clients. We can’t take in a lot because it’s too hot inside. Some clients don’t want to sit,” she said.
“The temperature is 29 Celsius inside and it’s humid. I have 25 staff and they are getting sick because of the heat. We have been shortening working hours as well just so our people could cope,” she added.
When Gulf News visited the building, it took only five minutes for us to be drenched in sweat because of the heat.
Gulf News contacted Stratum Dubai, which is managing the tower, on Tuesday for an official comment on the matter. A customer care representative told Gulf News on Tuesday: “According to the information we received from the building engineer, there was a technical fault in the chiller. But possibly before the end of today (Tuesday) or tomorrow, or maximum tomorrow morning, this is going to be resolved.”
Tomorrow came, but not the resolution.
Tenants have tried numerous ways to cope, like buying additional fans and coolers, Chalangova said. But it could only do so much.
The same goes for another tenant who requested anonymity. He said: “This has been a recurring issue that we sort of had to resolve on our own. At the moment, we’ve had to bring in external AC units at our own expense just to make sure that customers are not turned away. But it’s not working because we couldn’t keep the area cold enough.”
“It’s incredibly problematic. The heat is unbearable. The AC itself is blowing air that’s 27 Celsius. Customers have felt really, really sick. One lady almost passed out. It’s horrible,” he added.
When he tried to offer to fix the problem, he said the management gave him a quote of Dh45,000.
“I’m not going shell out that amount for a problem that we’re not responsible for.”
“It has affected sales dramatically, a drop of between 30 and 35 per cent. But it has transcendent from a sales issue to a safety issue. We have sent home staff to rest because they got sick. We just like it to be resolved,” he added.