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Plan to establish market for productive national families

The new facility, which would be established in co-operation with RAK Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, RAK Municipality, and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MLSA), besides a number of the NGOs, was aimed at turning the emirate’s society into a productive and self-dependent one.

“We are planning at turning the national families into small productive units to help them cope with the skyrocketing living expenses,” Najeeb Al Shamsi, Director General of RED, told Khaleej Times. The emirate has a large number of unemployed people and families that are entirely dependent on aid from both government and private charity bodies like the MLSA. The souk would be dedicated to the underprivileged local people to market their traditional handmade products like foods, sweets, diary products, honey, dates, preserved fish, potteries, textiles, carpets, clothes, perfumes, and household items, besides modern products like towels and tablecloths.

“This marketplace would help in preserving these traditional industries that reflect its unique cultural, social and historical identity,” he said. It is also part of a large-scale strategy to turn the emirate into a tourism hub to lure visitors from all over the world. The marketplace would also play host to different folkloric and cultural programmes. To preserve the site’s unique identity, kiosks within the facility’s boundaries would be built with traditional materials like leaves and trunks of date palm trees and would be rented to individuals as well as organisations. “We will dedicate a number of these kiosks to government departments, NGOs and artists to showcase their products and artistic works,” he added. This is besides the establishment of traditional coffee shop, museum and educational facility — where young generations could study the traditional handicraft — besides administrative offices.

The design of the marketplace will combine the traditional local style of architecture with modern facilities and will also blend with the architectural boom that sweeps all parts of the emirates. As for the site that has been proposed to establish the new facility, “We are seriously considering establishing it on the Al Remes-Shamel Street because it is a very strategic road that links the northern and southern parts of the emirate, besides its proximity to the city centre,” he said.

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