Dubai Aluminium Company Limited (“DUBAL”) today celebrated the success of its 2007/2008 DUBAL Educational Award competition by awarding cash prizes totalling AED 48,000 to the students from schools across the UAE who submitted the best entries to the annual contest.
Organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the competition is the second of its kind and is in line with the directive issued by H H Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum (UAE Minister of Finance and Chairman of DUBAL) for corporate organisations to help schools provide their students with research-based learning opportunities. It also demonstrates DUBAL’s stated corporate social investment objective to support education in the UAE as a vehicle for socio-economic advancement.
Khalid Essa Buhumaid, General Manager: Corporate Relations and International Affairs, advises that the competition is closely linked to schools’ visits to the aluminium giant’s smelter complex in Jebel Ali. “We encourage educational excursions to our facilities and generally entertain at least 1,300 students from 44 schools during the course of the academic year,” says Buhumaid. “During these visits, we inform the students and their teachers about our company by providing relevant facts and statistics. The DUBAL Educational Award requires that the students write an article or create an artwork – whether drawing, painting, sculpting, modelling or any other creative medium – within two weeks of their visit. The best entries per school, as nominated by their respective activities sections, are then entered into the DUBAL Educational Award competition, for adjudication by a panel of judges that includes representatives of DUBAL and the Ministry of Education.”
Twelve awards were presented during today’s ceremony: three each to the top students in the creative writing and artistic expression categories at both primary and secondary level. Their schools received trophies as a token of recognition and appreciation. The winners were:
Writing competition:
• Mohammed Al Mahrizi,from Masafi High School, in Ras Al Khaima.
• Mahmood Mohamed Jaber, from Al Qudwa Primary School, in Kalba.
Drawing competition:
• Nour Ahmed Al Halaq, from Al Yarmook Primary School, in Abu Dhabi.
• Moza Ahmed Khamas, from Al Jeer High School, in Ras Al Khaima.
The subject matter of every submission to the 2007/2008 DUBAL Educational Award competition focused on the theme of this year’s initiative, namely “DUBAL and the Environment”. The students were guided in their quest while visiting DUBAL by way of viewing an educational film on the company, a presentation and open discussion sessions, and a plant tour conducted by volunteers from within the organisation.
“We are delighted at the success of this year’s competition,” says Buhumaid. “Not only did it attract greater participation from the schools but also the entries were of higher calibre. It is extremely gratifying to witness the power of the competition as a platform for raising awareness of and interest in DUBAL while simultaneously giving us a mechanism to express our company’s genuine interest in education in a meaningful way.”
About Dubai Aluminium Company – DUBAL
DUBAL is ranked as the seventh largest producer of primary aluminium in the world, and currently ranks as the largest single-site aluminium smelter complex in the Western world and is also the single largest non-oil contributor to the economy of Dubai. Built on a 480-hectare site in Jebel Ali, Dubai, UAE, DUBAL’s major facilities comprise an 950,000 mtpa primary aluminium smelter, a 2,100 megawatt power station, a large carbon plant, three casthouses, a 30-million-gallon-per-day water desalination plant, laboratories, port and storage facilities.
The company has the capacity to produce approximately one million metric tonnes of high quality finished aluminium products a year, in three main forms: foundry alloy for automotive applications, extrusion billet for construction purposes and high purity aluminium for the electronics industry. A dynamic growth strategy will increase annual production volumes of metal to almost one million metric tonnes by 2008.
DUBAL serves 280 customers in 44 countries predominantly in the Far East, Europe, the ASEAN region, the Middle East and Mediterranean region, and North America. The company holds ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certification; and has twice won the Dubai Quality Award in the Production and Manufacturing sector (1996 and 2000). Furthermore, the company has won several international and local awards for its Safety and Environment performance.
