27 January 2008
Abu Dhabi: The strategy to maintain the good image of Abu Dhabi city is nowadays determined by residents, said Omar Mohammad Al Hashemi, Head of the City Image Management Section (CIM) of Abu Dhabi Municipality.
He talked to Gulf News on the functioning of his department, its achievements, priorities and some shortcomings too.
Gulf News: You have always been highlighting the participation of the residents in your strategy. Any new steps to increase people's involvement?
Omar Mohammad Al Hashemi: We have a plan to ensure direct involvement of the public in our day-to-day functions as 'the members of the City Image Management (CIM) Team'.
It will be like a social club or organisation under the CIM and people from all walks of life will be invited to be members.
Can you elaborate on how people's participation helped your strategy?
We were surprised to see fantastic suggestions and comments from people of different walks of life in public surveys conducted by private consultants on behalf of CIM.
About 10,000 people participated in various phases of surveys so far and they changed our concepts. Their views on the city's image were different from the concepts of officials. Some of the issues were not as critical as we considered, and vice-versa.
They gave us insight -from where to start. That insight inspired the CIM team to go forward with its new strategy which prioritised 41 issues as suggested by the public. Therefore, I consider people's participation as the biggest achievement of CIM since it was formed 15 months ago.
What was the most interesting thing from people's inputs and practical implementation?
The involvement of the public reached a stage where many of them, various nationals expressed their willingness to be volunteers to monitor the city. That is practical realisation also because officials or inspectors cannot be everywhere to enforce the rules and regulations but the people themselves have to do it.
We started our work from where people suggested were critical areas. It was surprising to see that all those problematic issues arose out of 'grey areas' where departments or agencies were confused about responsibility. Then we diverted our effort to identify such 'grey areas' and put them under the responsibility of either a particular department of the Municipality or CIM. That made detection and fixing of problems easy.
Did you achieve people's participation through your awareness programmes?
We have given priority to increasing the awareness of the public. To reach all communities we use three languages - Arabic, English and Urdu. To learn whether you have been damaging the image of the city, you can read a brochure published by CIM which lists 109 violations. It starts from 'Leaving or keeping items outside the shop limit' to 'keeping children's toys on street pavements without authorisation'. People approach CIM by phone or visit its website making it like the front desk of the Municipality.
People want remodelling of the city with more and more mega gardens and greenery. We coordinate with the Public Gardens Department of the Municipality in this regard.
Apart from the participation of the residents, what other factors have contributed to your success?
Involvement of all stake holders like various departments and official agencies have helped. All other official organs cooperate with the CIM. Participation of private companies also contributed to CIM's success. It was the first department in the Municipality to involve private companies to implement its strategies.
Are you totally satisfied with the performance of CIM? What do you feel are the major challenges in your endeavours?
I do not wish to exaggerate our achievements nor be complacent with them. We have identified some areas where we have not succeeded totally, but we try to exert all our effort to rectify them. Some issues were actually tips of the icebergs of the real problems and cannot be solved by quick-fix methods. But we divide them into short-term and long-term strategies. Moreover, rapid growth of the city and its population has created far too many challenges which cannot be addressed easily.
What are the new plans and strategies for 2008?
As part of the strategy to enhance the image of the city, a number of regulations will come into effect this year. A smoking ban in shopping malls in the city will be the major initiative in this regard. All such regulations have been made with suggestions from the public.
The successfully implemented regulation last year on restricting outside seating arrangement of cafes was suggested by the residents. People were really appreciative when chairs and table were removed from pavements and sidewalks in the city.
Do you have any new strategy for your monitoring team?
Active inspectors are scanning the city streets in about 50 cars to monitor the city image. Technological upgradation in the near future will make them more efficient. They will be equipped with external cameras on their cars to capture the violations. They will be given PDA's (Personal Digital Assistants) which will be linked to the central system of the CIM and will record the ongoing monitoring.
Gulf News 2008. All rights reserved.
