Page 285 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Seven

whereby most community services were undertaken by private
companies; this feature helped in later years to make the economic
structure of Dubai appear very different from that of the other
members of the federation. Many of the services which had become
desirable or necessary for the City Stale were not provided or
organised by government or municipality but by private companies.
The Dubai Electricity Co. was owned from its inception by a number
of local merchants and the Ruler, who was chairman of the board;39
the majority shareholder in the Dubai Slate Telephone Company was
International Aeradio Ltd., the Ruler held the rest of the shares and
was also the chairman of this board. Similar arrangements, whereby
the Ruler set up private companies in which he held a sizeable share
were made later as the need for other services developed.40
Between 1959 and 1961 an airstrip was built with sabkhah which
was brought from the salt flats along the coast;41 it could take
Dakotas and Herons, and in 1962 Viscounts of Kuwait Airways
started a service three times per week. In December 1963 work
started on an airport extension, and since the area is low-lying and
liable to flooding it was desirable to provide protection and to
stabilise the shore line of the inner creek. When approached to
consider establishing a weekly VC 10 flight to Dubai, the British
Overseas Airways Corporation was reluctant to commit itself
because the company thought that there would not be enough
demand. An inquiry among the foreign arms operating in Dubai and
among the Trucial Oman Scouts showed that there was great interest
in such a flight, and the Ruler guaranteed BOAC that a certain
number of seats would be occupied from Dubai on each flight. In fact
the demand for seats on these flights grew much faster than he had
anticipated, and even before the runway was completed in June 1965,
other airlines approached the Ruler of Dubai for landing rights.
The other big communications project was the construction of a
bridge across the creek to save cars travelling between Dubai and
Dairah the long detour around the head of the creek. A study was
prepared by a consultant to find the cheapest way to build this bridge /
at a convenient crossing point. But Dubai’s financial commitments
were already approaching the limit of what was then considered to
be a prudent assessment of the State’s ability to pay back the various
loans in the foreseeable future. Shaikh Rashid bin Sa'fd therefore
a pproached his son-in-law, the Ruler of Qatar, to pay for a bridge
more expensively designed than had originally been intended. After

260
I