Thursday, Nov 20, 2008

Gulf News

Abu Dhabi: More than 700,000 Emiratis and expatirates, desperately trying to complete the registration process for the national identity card before the December 31 deadline, can now breathe a little easy.

The pressure on the Emirates Identity Authority (EIDA) website has been eased by the initiative of a number of government and private organisations who have posted the pre-registration application software on their websites, a senior official told Gulf News on Wednesday.

Until recently, the website (www.emiratesid.ae) used to give a lot of problems as nearly 70,000 people used to try to access its online application form for the identity card, said Thamer Rashid Al Qasimi, planning director and project management director, EIDA .

"About 1.3 million people visited the site in October," he said. Such heavy traffic resulted in complaints of "non availability" of the online application form," he said. "Such a situation will not be repeated as about 50 websites are hosting the [pre-registration] software and the number of hosts will increase soon", said the official.

The EIDA website displays links to six other websites. "Some websites like www.theychat.com, www.uaefreezones.com, www.arabianbusinesscom,  www.exterran.com, www.budzshots.com and a number of other sites will also be added on the EIDA website soon", said the official. "Tamil Sangam, an Indian community organisation informed me that they got a thousand hits instantly after uploading the software on their website.

"We will give the software to more organisations which have sent us requests, following a Gulf News report on Monday," Al Qasimi said.

People can find the new websites hosting the software, said the official. But he warned that the software should not be used by businesses like typing centres for commercial purpose. "It is illegal to use it for commercial purpose and legal action will be taken against such practices.

He said EIDA will distribute free CDs of the software at registration centres. "The CD can be copied and redistributed. But it may take some more days to complete bulk production of CDs," he said.

Key points

The pre-registration software is available on these websites: www.emiratesid.ae, www.dubaicityinfo.com, www.gowealthy.com, www.abudhabiliving.net, www.cetagulf.org, www.uaetamilsangam.com, www.autosouk.com, www.theychat.com, www.uaefreezones.com, www.arabianbusiness.com, www.exterran.com and www.budzshots.com

Using the pre-registration application

- Download the pre-registration application from any website (see the list) and install it on your system (necessary instructions will be made available by the websites).

- Fill out the pre-registration application form on your system even without an internet connection. After completing the application, take the printout with the bar codes. If you don't have a printer, you can copy the PDF format of the bar-coded form on any external devise and take a printout from any another location.

- Once you get a printout of the bar-coded information page, you can proceed to any registration centre for registration.

Figure on users

- About 30,000 have downloaded the new software of pre-registration application within four hours of its introduction on the EIDA website (www.emiratesid.ae). About 30 other websites are also hosting it.

- Earlier, about 70,000 people tried to access the online application form a day.

- Number of visitors on EIDA website in October: 1.3 million.

- Number of calls received at the EIDA call centre in a day: 4,000 (since October). Call centre number: 600523432. It has 40 operators.

© Gulf News 2008. All rights reserved.

 

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