Collect the necessary documents
Medical
· 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 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 – 11th 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...
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...
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