Three more days to register for ID cards in Dubai without fines

The expatriates in Dubai emirate have just three more days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) to register for national ID cards without fines as the extended deadline in the emirate ends on Saturday.

The deadline in all other emirates had already ended and those who missed it are paying Dh20 a day fine which goes up to a maximum of Dh1,000.

Although the original deadline in Dubai emirate was May 31, 2012, theEmirates Identity Authority ( Emirates ID ) extended it for a month. The authority had said it wanted to help the expatriate labourers who constituted the majority among the residents who did not register before the May 31 deadline.

About 85 per cent of residents who have been registering in Dubai since June 1 [after the end of original deadline] are labourers, a senior official at Emirates ID told Gulf News yesterday.

The rest of them are mostly newcomers, children and people in other categories, said Mosabbah Al Masmari, Head of the Task Force which overseas ID card registrations in Dubai.

Despite the imminent deadline, there is not much rush at the typing centres and Emirates IDregistration centres now, he said.

It is because majority of the residents had already registered, Al Masmari said. But he did not have figures of total registrations or remaining people to be registered. He said that about 50,000 people were registering daily across the country in May and most of them were in Dubai.

“Still we extended the deadline to help labourers who might have delayed the registration due to financial reasons,” the official said.

He said the authority wanted to give the chance to each and everyone to participate in a major strategic project in the country. “When the deadline in Dubai ends, most of the people in the country will have registered in the population register and all projects in the country will be planned based on that data,” the official explained.

He urged all expatriates in Dubai to complete the registrations before the extended deadline to avoid being fined. He reiterated that the deadline for Emirati and expatriate children under 15 is September 30. And expatriate children whose residence visa expires this year have to register along with the renewal of their visa only. For example, if a child’s visa expires on December 31, 2012, he or she does not need to register before September 30 but can do it along with the visa renewal in December.