| Dubai New strategy on expat Emirates ID cards |
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| Tuesday, 10 November 2009 00:00 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The scheme would be concurrent with the authority’s present policy of requesting people to voluntarily register before a certain date, said Dr Ali al Khouri, the acting director general of Eida. “We haven’t abandoned the existing enrolment plan, but this one will run alongside it.” “We believe that to make the registration much more effective, we need to link it to services. We are not talking about enrolling the whole population in those emirates yet, but if you want to benefit from a service like renewing your driving licence or car registration you will have to have an ID card,” Dr al Khouri said yesterday. The ministry clarified that residents of Ajman, RAK, Umm al Qaiwain and Fujairah will still be able to renew residency visas without an ID card for the time being. However, the cards are expected to be a prerequisite for visa and immigration services in future. “If we believe that the registration points can accommodate the number of people that need visa renewals then they will be asked to have cards for that service too,” Dr al Khouri said. Eida was considering siting registration centres in official buildings such as the traffic department to ease the process, though there were issues over available space, he added. However, only about half of them responded by the deadline, leaving an estimated 400,000 people unregistered. This was despite the fact that the deadline had already been extended as registration centres struggled to cope with demand. “Unskilled workers aren’t customers of the traffic department so they aren’t going to be affected by the deadline.” Last month, Eida announced its plan to eventually merge most official personal documents, including labour cards, residency permits and driving licences, within the national ID card. That process is due to start in July next year. Officials believe having all such information on a unified database would aid crime prevention and detection, and help authorities plan public services more efficiently. “With the global challenges everywhere, the database system is about protecting people,” said Dr al Khouri. “The whole concept of ID cards isn’t to get people’s information in a database. It’s not about just that; the Government’s on a mission to protect people and that’s the important thing.”
SOURCE the national
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