UAE residents being asked to donate towards cost of world's largest flag

Flag will span 500,000 square metres and cost Dh11.75 million.

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DUBAI // Residents of the UAE are being asked to chip in for a Dh12 million national flag that would be the world’s largest.

The record-breaking banner will be a kilometre long and half a kilometre wide.

Donors will receive a detachable portion of the flag equivalent to their contribution to the Dh11.75 million cost.

“Someone can buy 100 square metres,” said Najmuddeen Meera Hussain, the owner of Ajman-based Around the World Clocks and Gifts, which plans to make the flag. “Individual sections will be detachable, which they can take home after the flag has been laid out on the ground for some time.”

If the flag is made, it will enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest, easily eclipsing the 65,000-square-metre flag of Lebanon that has held the record since 2010.

The 107-tonne flag would be too heavy and too large to be flown from a flagpole, and would instead need to be laid out on the ground.

It was originally planned to have been made by National Day, but Mr Hussain said he was unable to find a donor to cover the cost.

Despite that, he said he was not dissuaded. "We will not give up on this endeavour," he said. "We've already started making preparations and we want to finish it."

mcroucher@thenational.ae