Photo: GDRFA Director General Mohammed Ahmed Al-Marri (center) making the announcement about “Entry Permit 50+” to the media. (Photo by Jojo Dass)
‘Our latest smart services count seconds to get your visa. We would like people to 100 percent use this system.
DUBAI: The General Directorate of Residency & Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) has announced that it has put in place a fully automated system that can issue all kinds of visas in 15 seconds.
In a press conference, GDRFA Director General Mohammed Ahmed Al-Marri said they have rolled out the expedited online services that can be accessed through a GDRFA smart phone app “to make people’s lives easier and happier.”
“Our latest smart services count seconds to get your visa. We would like people to 100 percent use this system,” Al-Marri said.
Col. Dr. Omar Ali Saeed Alshamsi, GDRFA asst. director general for entry and residency permits said the program also covers applications for visit visas, including renewals.
“We want to reduce (the processing time),” he said, citing for instance that one doesn’t anymore need to keep sending the same requirements like passports when filing for another visa as all pertinent requirements earlier submitted have been stored in a database.
Visit visa applicants would still have to go through a sponsor or a travel agency, he said.
“One has to sponsor or application can be done through a travel agency,” he told media during a tour of the GDRFA’s Entry Permits Department, which noticeably was not as crowded as it had been prior to the rollout of the online system.
The system makes use of smart apps and a website where applicants can process documents. All a visa applicant has to do is download the GDRFA app.
Filipinos, expectedly, welcomed the news about the program which was named “Entry Permit 50+” and is GDRFA’s official entry to the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Program for Smart Government, which engages the public to vote for the agency that they deem is the most efficient with its conduct of its services.
This from the moment they have their entry visas processed to the time they land at the Dubai airports and on with their other legal status-related transactions with the government.
Al-Marri said GDRFA purposely invited Filipino and Indian media outfits for the press conference because their customer base are people who mostly avail of the government agency’s services.
Various officials have said it is estimated that up to 85% of the UAE’s approximately one million Filipinos arrived in the country on a visit visa which they eventually had changed to residency visa once employment has been found.
