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... 

Renewing your Emirates ID card.

 A useless piece of plastic so far but a big full page advertisement in the paper announcing fees for late renewal prompted me to begin the process. My card expired last month and with the proposed 20aed per day fees (to max 1,000) it made me think twice. Now the date from which they will begin charging varies depending on the Emirate and Abu Dhabi is down quite late on that list, however, there are some conflicting bits of information about that on the page where it suggests that charges can be calculated from November 1, although they will only be applied (asked for?)  in April 2012. Better be safe than sorry.

Turns out the process is quite easy and relatively quick. But of course there is a hook.  You need your old card, and your passport with your new visa. It is 100aed per year of visa, so if you have a  3 year visa it will be 300aed. Says in the paper that the maximum fee that typing centres can charge is 30aed. So I walked in to my local typing centre with 330aed.  Actually there is a set of 5 typing centres side by side and they fought over my business, but I semi-randomly walked into the middle one which had been the first to beckon me as I wandered nearby.  I confirmed that they could do the ID cards and was ushered to a seat. There I sat for about 10 minutes. The clerk flipped back and forth through the pages of my passport and meticulously copied details from my card. Then to my surprise he stuck a hole punch through the card in two places, destroying the embedded chip. Kind of sad really since it was a virgin chip, and will now never know the joy of electronic connectivity ;-)

He then went over the details he had typed in and together we checked number for number all the digits and words.  Finally he printed out a receipt and submission confirmation form and charged me 370aed. Hold on, where did the extra 40aed come from. Govt charges he said. But, but, but. No, no buts. Just pay up. Back home I called the number on the newspaper article which said to call if you got charged more than 30aed. Yes that’s right 70aed, 40 for the typing and 30 for delivery. Hang on, it says 30 for typing in the paper, nothing about delivery and anyway I have to pick it up from the post office. It’s not being delivered at all. No, no, the 30aed rate is the new rate that comes into effect later. It hasn’t been finalised yet. Then why is it published in the paper? Anyway it says on my receipt 30 for typing, why are you, the official agency telling different figures? …

We all know the answer to that, because nothing is actually ever straightforward. There always has to be thorn on the bush.

BTW, the paper advises strongly that you do not leave your passport with the typing centre, so if they can’t do it straight away, walk out and go to another one that will.