Dubai: Dubai Municipality clinics will stop conducting occupational health and other medical tests for residency visas from Sunday, the civic body announced on Thursday.
“Dubai Municipality decided to discontinue receiving any requests related to the new [occupational] health card, the renewed ones, or medical fitness and free-of-diseases certificate requests starting from next Sunday," the announcement posted on the municipality’s social media accounts said.
Dubai Municipality decided to discontinue receiving new requests for health cards starting from next Sunday.https://t.co/Aztp1SYqPe pic.twitter.com/5aVUEcaxhj— بلدية دبي (@DMunicipality) August 24, 2017
All such clinical tests, which until now was conducted by the Department of Public Health Services of the civic body, will now be moved to the Dubai Health Authority (DHA).
This is in line with the implementation of the Dubai Executive Council Decision No. 17 of 2017, the municipality said.
The move is also part of the municipality’s efforts to achieve the directions of the Dubai Government to offer integrated services, it added.
However, the civic body assured that the pending transactions and applications submitted before the date of implementation of the decision will be completed and delivered to their applicants according to the old rules and regulations.
The municipality clinics in Deira and Warsan serve over 2,000 applicants a day. Majority of them are workers who require occupational health cards to secure employment visas.
Health cards
Occupational health cards are issued to food handlers in all types of food establishments, salon workers, beauticians, barbers, staff with nurseries and kindergarten, employees of health clubs, fitness centres and spas etc.
They receive the occupational health card from the Dubai Municipality clinics which certify them to be fit for working in their categories of jobs.
The municipality’s medical services, which were only offered in the municipality’s main clinic in Deira those days, were earlier supposed to be discontinued after a similar decision was announced in 2010.
However, due to the huge public demand, the authorities later decided to allow the municipality clinic to continue to offer the services even after an agreement between the civic body and the health authority had ended.
