I remember a time when I had to fight to get into the Al Maya supermarket in Satwa. The reason? The large display board at the entrance where customers put up their typed or hand-written advertisements. It used to be teeming with offers or requests for ‘bed space'.

Bed space means exactly that; a space to put up your bed. The crowd around this area right there in front of the store made it difficult to even push through the throngs. Finally, I gave up going to the store.

A few months ago, I visited the store again, while I was researching this story. Though it was around 8pm, once a prime time for bed space hunters, there were just a few stragglers desultorily scanning the once-coveted board.

The board itself which used to overflow with the handbills that had to be removed every three days, had exactly seven coloured bits of papers requesting large-minded individuals to take on a couple of cats, an over-grown dog and offers for assorted furniture and household items waiting to be disposed of.

“It's been like this from early this year when we started getting letters of notice of demolition for the villa owners in this area,'' says Ronald Peros*, a Filipino national working at a hotel on Shaikh Zayed Road nearby.

“And when the officials started visiting the villas to find out how many were staying in each, we knew they meant business, the end was near.''

What Ronald says, casually smiling, touches on the core of the problem; the area that boasted some of the lowest rents in the city and has been home to many Pakistanis, Filipinos and Indians on a tight budget is no longer the haven they could fall back on; a haven they had even when they were not employed, when their friends would allow them to sleep on their beds while searching for a job.

Ronald was told by his sub-agent, an Indian, that his tenancy contract, which was due to expire mid-year, would not be renewed. Initially he thought the agent wanted to hike the rent of Dhs600.

By Shiva Kumar Thekkepat, Friday Staff writer

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