Abu Dhabi Crowding at some post offices across the country to collect national ID cards has prompted the authorities to announce new measures to ease card distribution.
The Emirates Identity Authority (Emirates ID) Wednesday said it has extended the deadline to collect the cards from post offices up to 90 days, instead of one month.
Wednesday, Emirates Post also started sending the ID cards to the companies of the applicants by courier, if there are more than five cards to be sent to a company, an official spokesman for Emirates ID told Gulf News Wednesday.
The cards will also be distributed through self-service kiosks very soon, he said.
The authority extended its apology to applicants who faced difficulty receiving their cards from the Central Post Office in Madinat Zayed in Abu Dhabi City during the past few days due to overcrowding. This particular post office has been crowded because most of the Abu Dhabi residents opted to collect their cards here, the spokesman said.
More than two million cards have been delivered during the first quarter of 2012, compared to 500,000 during the same period in 2011.
Self-service kiosks
The ID cards will be sent to the post boxes of individual applicants also. Since most of the applicants work with a particular organisation having a post box number, the card will be sent to that post box also. Providing the post box number in the application form is mandatory.
The self-service kiosks will start working for Emiratis in the first stage at four selected centres across the country. They will enable ‘on the spot printing' of ID cards and immediate delivery to the applicants.
The authority is working on introducing electronic kiosks which will renew ID cards the same day. They will be installed at shopping malls across the country in future, the spokesman said.
