More Emiratis need to be entrepreneurs, says Dubai civic chief

Hussain Lootah, director general of Dubai Municipality, said the UAE needs to start encouraging Emiratis to start their own businesses and be their own bosses.

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DUBAI // Emiratis need to stop relying on Government employment and look at entrepreneurship as a stable future, said the head of Dubai Municipality.

“We cannot risk becoming a country of just Government employees,” said Hussain Lootah, director general of the municipality, at the Government Summit session on the potential of public-private partnership.

“It is dangerous to have expectations that all jobs are Government jobs,” said Mr Lootah. “We must cancel the idea of looking for jobs and create facilities where they can run their own businesses and be their own bosses.”

“Governments and corporation must support and encourage small to medium enterprises (SME),” said Mr Lootah. “Dubai municipality is ready to work with any Emirati SME. We have already worked with a few – the latest was providing bicycles at parks.”

Dubai government departments must allocate 5 per cent of their annual budget to SME projects.

Mr Lootah added that by supporting SMEs we are supporting innovation and ingenuity in Emirati youth.

He also said that the municipality has allocated Dh1 billion for private sector partnership projects.

“People may ask, why go to the private sector? Well, the country is growing at a very fast pace, we can’t cover every factor, so we must allow the private sector to cover the operations of some things.”

Mr Lootah gave examples of projects where the municipality has partnered with private companies, such as the methane collection from landfills used as fuel, the Dubai Crocodile Park, and the door-to-door recycling programme.

“For the project to be successful we must ensure that it is successful for all parties involved,” he said. “Success can’t be for one side, it must be for all. But in the end the person receiving the service is the only one that can judge if it is successful. Their participation and feedback is very important.”

“There must be clear terms set determining the role of the private sector partner in the project,” said Fadi Ghandour, founder and vice chairman of Aramex. “Private monopolies are completely unacceptable.

“One of the biggest challeges we face in the Arab world is unemployment, 25 per cent of Arab youths are jobless. If we want to create future jobs we must ask the private sector what they want in the next five years.”

“Some claim that governments looking for private partnership is due to the economic crisis, this is wrong,” said Ibrahim Al Muaiqel, Director General of the Human Resources Development Fund in Saudi Arabia.

“There is no one size fits all model for public-private partnership. Innovation and excellence from the private sector will always drive these projects. The demands and expectation of this generation is very different then it was with previous generations.

“Now we are letting the end users or customers have a say in how they want to get these services, they are also another sector in these partnership, and this was it’s a win-win-win situation.”

“We cannot sacrifice quality for any reason,” said Mr Lootah. “There have been cases where over-competition caused a price war which resulted in a reduction in quality, such that it was below the standard that the public sector can provide.

“All services are linked to a timeframe. Nowadays that is how we evaluate the service. It must be available immediately.

“To maintain quality standards decisions must be made quickly. From our experience in the municipality, we have found that governance and transparency are key to success.”

malkhan@thenational.ae