Beginning the process of renewing your visa.

Collect the necessary documents

Medical

·         Photocopy of passport & visa page (+ copy of old passport if your visa is still in that one)
·         Medical Insurance card
·         Emirates ID card
·         (keep a copy of your passport with you while dealing with officials)
·         250aed (cash)

Emirates ID

·         JPG image of passport
·         JPG image of visa
·         JPG image of emirates ID front
·         JPG image of emirates ID back
·         340aed credit card

First up – get a medical certificate

Go and visit the Disease Prevention and Screening Centre building in Central Abu Dhabi, (Hazza Bin Zayed St – 11^th St).

It is best to go about 1pm or 1:30pm. Early morning is a chaos. If you go at 1pm as I did you will go straight through, no wait. I was the only one (man) being dealt with at 1pm on a Thursday afternoon!

Go to reception, and give them your passport & visa photocopy. They will staple various documents to it  and send you off with a wait token. I went straight to the empty counter. There they will fill out the forms and take your photo. They will ask you for the money so have the cash ready (you might be able to use a card?).  Keep the receipt because your company may reimburse you for it. Then they send you around the back for a chat with a doctor. Assuming you look healthy you’ll just be asked to take a blood test and chest x-ray. For both of those I was the only person there. It was like VIP service.

After the x-ray you will be left with a little card with a bar code on it and you will be ready the exit.

The hardest thing is dealing with the car park outside which is always crowded. If you venture around the back it becomes a tortuous maze.

If you want the status of your application you can go online to https://bpmweb.haad.ae/notifications/VisaStatus/Status.aspx where you will put in the application number from the little card and the UID number from your visa. Their website is pretty good so have a look at that. https://www.haad.ae/haad/tabid/1200/Default.aspx

The report should be ready to pick up in 48 hours. Go back to Seha and hand over your card.

Meanwhile you can go online to apply for your new Emirates ID card which you will need for the visa. You apply at www.emiratesid.ae but you are best to take this link to the application page http://www.id.gov.ae/en/services/e-services/online-form.aspx where you create a user account.

You will need jpg image copies of your passport and visa, plus image copies of your current ID card so get those ready in advance. Register for an account and you will get emailed a password. Log on. I advise you to change your password straight away with the link on the top left corner (Capital letter plus number, minimum 8 characters).

There are quite a few pages of information that you have to enter, most of which they already have and you just copy out of your passport and visa pages. Finally you get to upload your images and then they ask you for money. Costs 340aed for a three year renewal.  You will get a text message when you submit the paper work.  You get another text message to confirm that the application has been “validated”. Once you have that validation you go back onto the website and log in again. You can then print the document. Be careful with pop up blocking – I couldn’t get mine at first because the computer blocked the print function without informing me, so make sure you enable pop ups for that site. If you encounter trouble with getting it to print then just try a different browser.

You need the medical paper and the emirates ID application paper to proceed with getting the visa. At this point I hand my documents over to the company PRO and hope things go smoothly down at the Immigration office on Al Saada st (19th st).
UPDATE
My application got rejected twice as the Immigration office introduced a new requirement which was not listed on the form and caught my PRO by surprise. Apparently now they also need a new sponsor's letter together with the application. Once this was created and submitted it went through okay. The application is done electronically so all the documents get scanned and uploaded. Once approved, then passport goes into the office. Things just keep on changing... 

Insurance card games

Back to the ridiculous.- Tales of Bureaucracy Burdens.

Okay, our insurance cards ran out. I'm afraid that is normal for my company. The new ones finally turned up 5 days after expiry (better than the record 3 weeks). But my oldest daughter is now 18. So the company won’t pay for her anymore. Okay I knew that was coming but in the past they have let staff pay for the insurance themselves with the same coverage, that is they supply the card and employees pay for it instead. Not this year. Suddenly that is not policy. We have to arrange it ourselves. Would have been nice to know that before the cards ran out wouldn’t it? I mean that  is five days for which she has had no cover, not to mention the time it will now take to organise. Ah, but how to organise it.  Cut loose I am now beginning to see the bureaucratic monster arising. Talked to Daman, and they do offer individual coverage. First problem you have to go and apply in person, no online stuff. There is a basic Abu Dhabi policy but I was looking at a more comprehensive plan. However, when I talked to Daman I was told the basic plan could be purchased on the spot whereas the other plans involved applying for a quote which would be 3 working days. The weekend is approaching so I thought, well might just as well go for the cheap policy to get the quickest coverage. Then the caveats appeared. First she needs a certificate of “insurance continuity”, to show she has been previously covered. Her old card which has just expired and shows the dates of her coverage is not sufficient. Nor apparently is the national online database which HAAD has created. No, she has to have a letter from my company. Question – why didn’t my company prepare that document when they discontinued her coverage? Okay, so that will take some time. However, that is not all. To get the basic package she also has to have a certificate of non-employment. Pardon? She is still at school! You have to get it from the courts. How?  Well I was told by the helpful insurance agent that I could find out from the courts’ webpage. Gee thanks, if this is a requirement of the insurance companies you’d think they’d at least know the procedure.  On the courts' page I find that you need two witnesses plus daughter to front with ID cards etc., apply, wait, and probably pay...  Now the non basic plan doesn't need that certificate, so I wonder why I (& two others) would bother wasting a day at the courts to get such a useless document. Okay, so I still have to wait for a continuity certificate, and will have to wait for the application to be quoted.  Hope no accidents happen over the weekend.  I download the forms from Daman to get a headstart on filling them. Next confusion is whether my daughter is the policy holder or I am. She should be but since she is under my sponsorship she probably won’t be. That means I have to fill in the forms two different ways to cover both circumstances, not to worry they are only 5 pages long each.

Now I have to try to get to their office which is of course only open “bank” hours. However, my daughter is doing exams. So I will be taking the application in without her. Wonder how that will work? Well, if I am the policy holder why should she be there? If they need her she can come in when they give the quotation, it is after all only an application, not acceptance. Strange how little confidence I feel in that argument.  I see the days stretching out, and unforeseen paperwork popping up... tbc

Actually I had to delay over the weekend so took my daughter in on the Sunday. Looong wait to get attended to. Daughter as policy holder ended up being the option. But they still scanned my ID card as well. No firm date for return of quote, and a couple of days later we had to chase them up to find out if it had been issued. Could not find out over the phone. They insisted I had to go in to see the same agent, to which I said I had no idea if he would be working that day. They promised to email him to get in touch and gave me his landline number. I called repeatedly but never got through and never received a call back. However when I got home that evening I found out that he did call my daughter directly to say the quote was ready to pick up. She went in the next day to get it and pay. Cash only, no credit cards. Paid but still have to wait for a card, not even a temporary one issued!