UAE ID card website continues to frustrate expatriates
Abu Dhabi: With the deadline to get National Identity Cards approaching fast, people are frustrated as many of them are neither able to fill up an online application form nor get an appointment with Emirates Identity Authority (EIDA) to register for their cards.
Most of them were worried whether they would be able to complete the registration before December 31, amid reports on possible sanctions like freezing of bank accounts from January 1, 2009 of Emiratis and expatriate professionals who don’t register.
Many of them were disappointed after failing to fill up the application online. “Whenever I opened the EIDA website, the application was not available and finally when I got it after 15 attempts, it disappeared before I completed the form”, said G. Nair a Gulf News reader in Dubai.
Others who were fortunate to fill up the application form online or did it through Empost post offices were complaining about non-availability of appointments.
They said they could not register even after waiting for long time in queues in front of EIDA centres.
“It would not be fair to fix December 31 as a deadline, if EIDA is not in a position to handle the pressure and grant appointments”, said Arish Ehsan in Abu Dhabi.
Considering such complaints, EIDA has developed free software to replace online application form and are trying to increase the capacity of registrations, a senior official told Gulf News yesterday. “There is no move to freeze bank accounts of Emiratis or expatriate professionals who don’t register before the deadline,” said Engineer Thamer Rashed Al Qasemi, Planning Director and Project Management Director at EIDA.
“EIDA does not have that authority but Emiratis may find it difficult to do certain official transaction from January 2009, as per a law in this regard”, said Al Qasemi. “The law stipulates that National Identity cards will be the only valid document for Emiratis for identification for any official transactions from January 1, 2009″, said Al Qasemi.
He clarified, “Applicants will no longer face ‘web failure’ due to heavy traffic to fill up the application online. They will soon get a free software of ‘pre application registration’ which will enable the applicant to fill up the form on a computer even without an internet connection, and take the print out with the bar code to proceed for registration, said the official. Apart from EIDA website, free CDs of software will be available at all EIDA centres which can be copied and redistributed, said Al Qasemi.
“People will be able to download it from several other websites which have offered to host the ’software’. We welcome other organisations (having websites) to follow the suit and contact me on my email: talqasemi@emiratesid.ae,” he said.
The arrangement with the Empost post offices to fill up the forms at a cost of Dh 40 will continue and it is meant for people who don’t have access to a computer….SOURCE
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