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Emirati With Soft Corner for Filipinos

DUBAI — Businessman Abdul Razagh Mohammadi has won the hearts of Dubai’s Filipino expatriate community with his helping mentality and providing job opportunities for more than 20 years.

Abu Nader, as the Emirati is popularly known among the community, told Khaleej Times that his closeness to the Filipinos started when he met a Filipina who was employed as a maid but wanted to work elsewhere in a different capacity.

“I felt she should be working as a professional as she had a business degree,” Nader said.

“I decided to meet her employer to release her. Then I hired her as my first secretary starting with Dh1,500 in 1985. She got a car, a house and a Dh7,000 salary when I gave her a chance to work in Dubai Media City,” Nader said.

“From then on, and for 20 years, I have been doing business with Filipino staff. I only have a handful of employees from other nationalities working for me as drivers and shop helpers.”

Over the years he has helped out more than a hundred Filipinos who needed jobs either by providing them work or asking his business friends who might have jobs for them.

Nader has put up a trading company, a travel agency and a supermarket and the Philippine Supermarket, employing Filipinos.

“When I applied for licence, the officials told me to have any Arabic name for my supermarket because this is the first time that an Emirati wants to use a foreign name for his shop in UAE,” Nader said.

“But, I insisted to put in my application, Philippine Supermarket, as I want to offer Philippine products to the Filipino community at a much lesser price than what other supermarkets offer,” he said.

“They work hard, and they earn only that much, that I feel offering them goods at a cheap price can help them save their money to be sent home.”

Yearly, he gives free air tickets to those in need at the Philippine labour office. His work has gained him visits by Filipino government officials including President Gloria Arroyo and Senator Jinggoy Estrada.

He met President Gloria Arroyo thrice, when he made his courtesy visit to her vacation house in Tagaytay, Philippines then in Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai in 2008 and the third time was at Dubai Airport when the President was on her business trip to Switzerland in January 2009.

He also never misses any important event in the Filipino community, including the commemorations marking the day the late President Cory Aquino was laid to rest, when he issued a memorandum circular to all his Filipino employees to wear yellow T-Shirts and yellow ribbons.

“I respect the late President. I want to be part of the grief of the Filipino nation,” he said.

lily@khaleejtimes.ae