Abu Dhabi: Residents have been irked by long queues and a lack of organisation at the capital’s main public clinic for visa-related medical tests.
Many residents report that they have had to make multiple visits to the centre, and that it is also difficult to determine the exact procedure for the checks, which are undertaken in Abu Dhabi at Disease Prevention and Screening Centres.
“My visa was set to expire before the end of December, and so I had requested a staff member at our firm to get an appointment for the medical check at the beginning of the month. He arrived at the centre at 12pm, only to be told that there were no more appointments available for the day,” Gopa Kumar, a 41-year-old chief operational officer, told Gulf News Tuesday.
Kumar sent his staff again at 6.30am the next morning, but there was a long queue stretching outside the centre.
“I was worried because I wanted to renew my visa before travelling. When I eventually managed to get an appointment, it was for a date in the middle of January!” he complained.
The Disease Prevention and Screening Centres in Abu Dhabi are public health care facilities managed by the Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (Seha). According to the Seha website, there are nine centres spread across the emirate, but several of them are in Western Region towns. In Abu Dhabi city, there are only two centres, with the main one located on Hazza Bin Zayed Street.
Lengthy queues have become a regular occurrence outside this facility every morning. These lines however appear to disappear later in the day.
“This is probably because they stop giving appointment by midday, a practice which causes great inconvenience for residents. I eventually opted to pay Dh100 extra to get the test done on a priority basis. I was told such appointments are not always available, but I got lucky,” Kumar said.
An Emirati business owner who declined to be named said that it is not always possible for people to pay extra money to get the test done, especially if the money is allocated by the company for each of its employees.
“In a city as big as Abu Dhabi, there should be more than two centres for these visa-related tests,” he added.
A comment from Seha was not available at the time of going to print.