DOHA: A sticker-free residency permit (RP) system is currently under trial to ensure it works faultlessly once it is implemented. The system’s implementation is expected soon after the trial is over and the higher-ups give their nod.
Under the new system RP stickers will not be put on expatriates’ passports. Identity (ID) cards, either the regular ones or chip-enabled with more information than they carry now (including the address of the holder), will, though, continue to be issued.
The ID will be physical proof of the validity of an expatriate’s RP, according to the head of Expatriate Affairs Department at the Ministry of Interior.
The officials didn’t say how the ID cards will be issued but earlier media reports suggested one of the ideas being toyed by the authorities was to post it to the applicant. Brig Nasser Jabr Al Attiyah said the idea behind launching the new, sticker-free RP system is to make sure that his department becomes visitor-less.
“We are making efforts to make sure that all of our RP work is done by people online through Metrash 2,” Al Attiyah told the in-house police periodical, Al Shurta (the Police). “Our department is trying to expand our online services,” he said in remarks published in the latest edition. Once the new sticker-less RP system is in place not only the main expatriate affairs section of RP will become visitor-less but also its various branches, he said.
And both, expatriate workers and their families will benefit from the project. ID cards will have more information than they carry now. Immigration officials at the airport will simply feed the name of a resident or alternatively, his or her passport number, and all details will be on the screen on their computers.
The head of the RP section at the Expatriate Affairs Department, Brigadier Saleh Al Kuwari, meanwhile, said his section issues 2,500 new RPs and renews another 5,000 daily.
“Our department also receives complaints about missing ID cards and issues duplicates,” Al Kuwari told Al Shurta in an interview. Colonel Mohamed Khalifa Al Sulaiti, head of the visa section, talked about visit visas for family members of expatriates in remarks to the police magazine and said family visit visas are initially issued for a month and then renewed for five months after medical checkups The Peninsula
