Egyptian restaurant to be auctioned for damages

A popular Egyptian restaurant in Abu Dhabi will be auctioned under a court order to pay damages for an employee who lost a finger during work, the Arabic language daily Emarat Alyoum reported on Sunday.

The court ordered the auctioning of all contents of Abu Shakra restaurant on Tuesday after its owners rejected an earlier sentence to pay Dh150,000 in damages to the worker, Ashraf Abdul Samei, the paper said.

Ashraf lost a right hand finger in a faulty mincer at the restaurant while two other fingers were severely damaged, it added.

It said the owner refused to pay that sum on the grounds the diyya (blood money paid to the dead’s relatives) is set at Dh200,000 in the UAE.

This means the compensation for the loss of three fingers should not exceed Dh60,000 and since one finger was lost, the total compensation should be around Dh21,000, the owner told court, according to the paper.

“But the court rejected his offer and sent inspectors to the restaurant where they confirmed the mincer lacked basic safety standards…the inspectors evaluated the contents of the restaurants at Dh150,000 and the court ordered an auction for those contents to be paid in damages to the affected worker,” the paper said.