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New Indian Passport, Visa Centres in UAE

DUBAI - The long wait for passport and visa services at the Indian missions in the UAE was finally over on Thursday with the opening of exclusive centres dedicated for processing these services through Empost.

The first of the dozen such centres was inaugurated by the Indian Consul General in Dubai Venu Rajamony and CEO of Empost Sultan Al Al Midfa in Deira.

The centre in Al Owais Building behind Arabian Automobiles will start receiving applications from today while the rest of the centres would start functioning from Sunday.

All these centres would be open from 7am to 10 pm, offering ample time for Indian expatriates to avail the services before and after working hours and on weekends.

A web site (www.ipavsc.com) has been set up to provide the location maps and information on the various services offered at these centres and for checking the status of applications.

A toll free call centre (600-522229) has also been established for queries and information.

The decision to outsource the collection of applications for passports and visas was prompted by a significant increase in the applications over the years, leading to heavy crowds at the Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Indian Consulate in Dubai.

The missions currently handle around 200,000 passports and 63,000 visa applications annually.

About 4,000 residents every day visit the missions to seek passport and visa services. While applications of passports and visas will now have to be submitted at the Empost centres, attestations of documents will continue to be done as before at the Embassy and Consulate.

Empost will charge a fee of Dh12 for each passport service and Dh 50 for each visa service, excluding the normal passport and visa application fees charged by the Indian missions.

Security Assured

A senior Empost official assured protection of the personal data to be provided to Empost staff while collecting applications for passport and visa services.

“Empost has hired and trained about 100 multi-lingual Indian graduates to handle the services. We have taken measures to assure the security of the applicants’ data and will make use of a dedicated, secured server for storing encrypted data, Director of Operations S.P. Nayar told Khaleej Times.

“The new centres will not accept passport size pictures; instead they would require all applicants to be present in person to be pictured digitally,” he added

· sajila@khaleejtiemes.com