Building of new pavilions gets underway

Global Village managed by DSF and Dubai Festival City will run from 15th January to 15th February 2004 and there will be 38 countries represented.

Participating countries were given permission to start constructing their pavilions on 18th November and amongst some of the first to start building were Thailand, China, Lebanon and Syria. It is expected that next week several more participants will get plans underway and representatives for Russia, Vietnam, Ukraine, India and Singapore are all expected to start building imminently.

Ibrahim Abdul Rahim, Director Global Village said, "Having viewed most of the plans for the pavilions I am convinced that the creativity and designs for 2004 will far outreach those of previous years. The decoration and attention to detail looks remarkable, I look forward to seeing all the pavilions in their completed state."

Hussain Kaswani, Project Coordinator Global Village said, "We have announced that all participants can now start constructing the infrastructure of their pavilion s and that this process must be completed by 15th December. There are more countries represented this year than ever before so it is important that participants abide by the deadlines and also comply with health and safety guidelines. All our guidelines will be supervised by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, Dubai Police and Dubai Municipality."

The properties will vary considerably adding to the multi cultural atmosphere of Global Village. Each Pavilion will be designed according to local custom and heritage with the front gates in particular representative of famous landmarks or traditions of the country. The size of the properties will vary with plots ranging between 550sq meters to 7000sq meters; the largest will be the Indian pavilion

Although the infrastructure must be completed by mid December the final date to submit the pavilion will not be until 7th January giving participants plenty of time for those all important final touches.

Global Village 2004 is expected to be one of the biggest attractions of DSF and there will be more facilities and services than ever before. These will include post offices, telecommunications services (Etisalat), banks, exchange stores, information centres, hospitality tents, medical centres and much more. Parking lots for more than 13,000 cars will be built to reduce traffic jams and make access as easy as possible.