Dubai Restaurants Will Soon Offer Free Tap Water

by Vaishnavi Venkataraman
Dubai Restaurants Will Soon Offer Free Tap Water

Living in Dubai also means enjoying the varied culinary experience the city has to offer. Dubai’s food scene leaves us with a happy face and a tummy. However, the disappointment happens when we are asked to pay extra for water! Feel it? Well, if you’ve lived in Dubai, you sure will know the pain of paying for bottled drinking water at restaurants. Turns out, not anymore! Hotels and restaurants in the city will soon offer tap water for drinking purpose. Yay or nay, you decide!

What’s It?

Restaurants and hotels in Dubai will soon start serving tap water for drinking purpose. The new regulation, a part of Dubai Food Code 2020 and is an effort to cut down the use of single-use plastics.

Amal Albedwawi, head of the drinking water control unit at the municipality, said: “Whenever you visit a hotel or restaurant, you can select whether to have filtered tap water or bottled water.” She further explained that this was the first time tap water regulations have made it to the Food Code and that the water offered by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) is completely fit for direct consumption.

The initiative is still in its nascent stage and is yet to officially be part of the federal law. It has also been agreed upon that restaurants will not be fined for the first two years of implementation.

What Else?

The Dubai Municipality has also launched a new rule which urges restaurants to mention the calorific value of each dish on the menu. Talk about healthy eating habits! Restaurants with over five branches across the city will carry the calorie of each dish on the menu starting this year.

Other catering agencies will implement the rule from 2020. The new initiative is an effort to provide healthy and delicious food to the residents while letting them choose food that will do them good.

Dubai Municipality director-general Dawoud Al Hajri said: “ “It is an innovative program of Dubai Municipality, through which the Municipality will encourage restaurants to provide healthy and tasty meals to consumers to achieve Dubai Municipality’s vision of developing a happy and sustainable city.”