Indian missions hire new firm for attestations
Independent offices will begin offering services in Abu Dhabi and Dubai by October
Abu Dhabi: A new company has been contracted to offer attestation services that have been outsourced by Indian diplomatic missions in the UAE.
The Indian Embassy in Abu Dhabi has selected IVS Global Services Private Limited, an Indian company, to carry out the attestation services, a top Indian diplomat told Gulf News.
The company will open new centres for attestation in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and start offering its services by early October. Although the Indian missions had outsourced attestation services about three years ago, the company that took over the services had been functioning at the premises of the missions all along.
As the contract with the current service provider ends by next month, the embassy had invited bids for the new contract.
The service fee for attestations will also come down to a flat Dh4.50 per transaction. At the moment, it is Dh8 in Abu Dhabi and Dh10 in Dubai. Attested documents will still be returned the same day.
The documents that can be attested through the new company include academic certificates, marriage and birth certificates issued in India, power of attorney and other such documents executed by Indian citizens in India or the UAE.
Apart from the service charge, the fee per transaction will be Dh80, if the attestation relates to a document dealing to property matters. For other attestations, the fee will be Dh40 per attestation.
IVS Global Services Private Limited has been selected based on its lowest quotation from among the five companies in the bidding process, said M.K. Lokesh, India’s Ambassador to the UAE.
“We will sign the contract with them and the locations for the centres will be identified soon,” Lokesh said.
According to the notification for the bids, the service provider shall ensure that the attestation centre is situated in a premises within a radius of 5 kilometres of the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai, and is easily accessible by public transport including the Metro and offers sufficient parking space. These conditions may be waived at the discretion of the embassy or the consulate.
The centres will be open from 9am to 5pm on working days. At the moment, the attestation service is offered from 8am to 12 noon at the embassy and consulate.
The ambassador said the new attestation centres in Dubai will cater to Indians in all the other emirates as well. Explaining the difficulty in opening attestation centres in all emirates, he said that, unlike the passport services, a consular official has to be present at each centre to attest documents.
Based on the average for previous years, the embassy and consulate expect to receive about 35,000 and 85,000 documents respectively for attestation during 2012-2013.
IVS Global Services Private Limited had been awarded the outsourcing work relating to collection and delivery of documents for attestation by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. The Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi attests approximately a million documents each year.
