ABU DHABI // A bus driver and supervisor have been sentenced to three years in jail for negligence leading to the death of a three-year-old girl, who was locked in a school bus last year.
The owner of the transport company that leased the vehicle to the school and a school administrator were also found guilty of charges related to the death of Nizaha Aalaa.
And Al Worood Academy, where Nizaha was a KG1 pupil, was ordered to close on Sunday and fined Dh150,000 by the Court of Misdemeanours.
Nizaha died from suffocation on October 7 when she was locked in the bus after it arrived at the school. Her body was found at 11.45am after she had fallen asleep in the back seat.
Her death shocked the community.
On Sunday, the owner of the bus company was sentenced to six months in jail for endangering lives. He was also ordered to pay a fine of Dh500,000 for employing staff who were not under his sponsorship.
An administrator at the school was given a suspended, three-year jail sentence and fined Dh20,000 for failing to check student records that day.
The driver and attendant were also fined Dh20,000 each, and they, the administrator and the school have been ordered to pay blood money of Dh200,000 between them to Nizaha’s family.
Each defendant has a month to appeal against their sentence.
The school was ordered to close, and pay fines of Dh50,000 for causing the girl’s death and Dh100,000 for endangering pupils’ lives by hiring unlicensed school buses.
On October 20 last year, the Abu Dhabi Education Council ordered Al Worood Academy to close its doors in August this year, when its operating licence would be revoked. Adec took over its management for the rest of the academic year.
The regulator’s ruling followed Nizaha’s death and repeated poor rankings for the school, at which 59 per cent of enrolments are Emirati, after inspections.
All five defendants denied responsibility for the girl’s death.
The driver said he was ordered to not have contact with pupils. His responsibility was only to drive them to and from school.
He said it was the supervisor’s duty to check that all pupils had left, and on the day of Nizaha’s death she told him he was clear to park the bus.
She later admitted to prosecutors that she had not checked the back seats.
Throughout the trial, the supervisor requested adjournments to appoint a lawyer, but was still not represented on Sunday.
She told the court she was a cleaner at the school but was given the job of supervising children on the bus, despite not being licensed for the job.
The school administrator’s defence team argued that it would have been impossible for her to call all 1,075 parents of absent children that day in time to discover the whereabouts of the missing girl before she died.
Nizaha died the day after the Eid Al Adha holidays, when many parents kept their children home for the full week.
The school had argued to the court that it had contacted Adec several times to report that the buses were not up to standard for carrying pupils.
It asked for permission to increase pupils’ fees to hire better buses.
But Adec told the school to contact the police department responsible for assessing the buses. The school said it had been waiting for police to issue their findings.
The owner of the bus company said the school checked the buses before using them and knew they were not licensed.
Prosecutors said the company owner confessed to recruiting supervisors for the buses who were not under his sponsorship, but he argued that they had been appointed by the school.
Nizaha's death led to the introduction of strict rules for school buses to better protect the safety of pupils.
The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department said the case had drawn attention to malpractices that led to a shocking tragedy, as the victim was a child who should had better care and protection.
hdajani@thenational.ae
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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