Educated wives empower the entire nation

• Last Updated: November 03. 2009 7:55PM UAE / November 3. 2009 3:55PM GMT

I refer to Great minds think alike on progress (November 3). At the Festival of Thinkers in Abu Dhabi, Dr Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner, made this statement: “Young girls, after they graduate from university and become housewives, their education is wasted.”

I vehemently disagree with this. First and foremost, education is never wasted, as long as it is imparted and imbibed with an open-minded approach. People who think the sole purpose of education is procurement of a job and earning a livelihood could not be further from the truth. 

A woman, when she is educated, will bring up her children and manage her family in a far better way than an illiterate and ignorant woman will. What better service to society than to bring up honest and honourable human beings with a penchant for education and hard work and the betterment of society with higher moral standards. 

A woman’s education is more vital to society since she is the one responsible for the future generation of a country. To inculcate the right values and morality in children is to empower and educate an entire nation. A man can sustain a family, a woman can nurture it.

Munira I Maladwala, Dubai

Prompt service from city staff

With reference to your article The hotline that is not so hot, my experience with the city of Abu Dhabi’s responsiveness to complaints has been outstanding. On October 11, I visited the seventh floor of the Abu Dhabi Municipality Building to explain that many of the lamps and globes in the decorative lamp poles in my neighborhood, Al Karamah, were burned out or broken.

The next day, three men came to my street and photographed the offending lamps and globes. By the end of last week, less than three weeks later, every street lamp was burning brightly and every globe had been replaced. My street no longer looks poorly maintained.

Furthermore, later on the day of my visit, the municipal staff kindly called my husband to note that I had left my cell phone behind and held it safely for my return.  

I don’t believe you can expect more than the excellent response I experienced from the Abu Dhabi Municipality in the face of a resident’s complaint.

Cheryl Keown, Abu Dhabi

A surprising development

I refer to the article Abu Dhabi to invest $1 trillion on projects (November 3). On the topic of introducing a metro system in Abu Dhabi, I have an anecdote to share. Two years ago in my sophomore year, I had to come up with a project for my statistics class at university, and the topic my group members and I chose was “Introducing a Metro in Abu Dhabi City”.

We surveyed a sample size of 100 randomly chosen Abu Dhabi residents and came to a statistically backed conclusion that the metro would be a welcome addition to the city.

Our professor, while praising our hard work, commented that the idea was not feasible and the government had no such plans, and that our study was not as realistic as that of other groups who chose to study issues like the causes of road accidents. Needless to say, two years down the line our idea does not look so far-fetched after all.

SA, Abu Dhabi

More tributes to Sheikh Zayed

In reference to Sultan Al Qassemi’s opinion piece He was our Washington and our Lincoln, rolled into one (November 2), he has truly put our exact emotions into prose. Thank you, Sultan, for this pleasant reminder of our duties towards Sheikh Zayed. His actions were what made us, and the rest of the world, recognise what a loving, great leader he was, setting the stage for where we are today as a nation and people.

The question of where we stand tomorrow lies with us today and I always ask myself: are we, as a generation, ready to take the torch and run with our late father’s dream?

Henan A, Dubai

This is a good tribute to Bu Khalifa. I am not an Emirati, but getting to know the UAE better. The very fact that Sheikh Zayed was able to forge the UAE federation together out of small and vulnerable Trucial States, in an age that increasingly has become one of combat zones everywhere, is no small miracle. It is tough to imagine how to remain a non-belligerent entity while obtaining one’s states rights from colonial powers and being able to care for all your citizens.

The record of having absorbed and managed a huge expat influx is amazing, given the much more developed West’s management of and attitudes towards immigration. The Libya comparison is also definitely illuminating.

We can clearly see the emergence of new regional economies and new centres of influence over the last decade. The UAE is one of them and is transitioning from a small welfare state into a global economic region comparable with Hong Kong and Singapore.

Athar Mian, Abu Dhabi