Abdul K., an Indian expatriate resident in the UAE for three years, was recently told by his office to get his medical fitness certificate processed, to enable his company renew his employment visa.
Accordingly, he went to one of the designated centres - and thereby hangs a tale.
"Despite getting there early in the morning, I found there were already crowds of people waiting in serpentine queues to have their 'smart applications' filled in at the typing centres in and around the complex," he related.
"I myself got my application filled in after a good two-hour wait - and thereafter found I had to wait in another long queue, to have the form accepted."
This took another couple of hours.
"And then there was another queue to get my blood examined, before I could finish all the procedures. It all took up my entire morning."
Ignorance
Abdul counted himself among the lucky ones: "Some of the people there had to undergo X-ray and other tests as well, while I felt sorry for the ladies who had to come for their fitness certificates - the sheer crush of people in some of the facilities would, I am sure, have rendered the experience unpleasant for them."
He also pointed to the sheer ignorance regarding documentation required and the procedures entailed among most applicants, coupled with the overall lackadaisical attitude of many among the counter staff and other officials.
In the final analysis, Abdul was indeed among the lucky ones, for as Sheena R., a single working mother of two, recounted: "There was no queue as such, and I tried for an hour to fight through the crush of people to get to the typing counter, but finally had to give up. Instead, I finally approached my office to get the smart form filled in."
To add to the confusion, documentation and procedural requirements are not uniform throughout the UAE. Further, residents claim the counter staff and officials themselves sometimes offer conflicting advice, rendering the confusion worse confounded.
Interestingly, they observe, it is only some centres in Dubai and Sharjah that witness such crowds; elsewhere the facilities run by the Preventive Medicine Departments at the Ministry of Health offer quicker service.
The fitness certificate is one part of the issue; the health cards, and payments thereof, are another. Officials have, for instance, in recent days moved to clarify the issue of collecting health card fees with retrospective effect from 2001, and Hassan Ahmed Al Alkim, Undersecretary of Health, has explained it will be revoked.
Other issues
But there are still other issues to be clarified, and procedures streamlined.
For example, in Sharjah, the health fitness certificates for new visas as well as renewals are provided by both the Medical District at the Preventive Medicine Department in Al Ghubaiba area, and by Sharjah Municipality's Clinic in Al Buteena area.
Here, the Municipality Clinic has fewer documentation requirements.
Abu Dhabi has a problem of a different nature which shows up a possible lacunae in the system: 80,000 health cards at the MoH Registration Departments still remain uncollected, and several have now expired.
Officials note applicants in such instances ask for the health card only to get the receipt from the counter, which is then used to collect the blood test, and thus get the labour card.
If, however, they come to collect the health card after it has expired, they will have to pay once again to reactivate it.
Abdul, meanwhile, noted his company offers him health insurance, and can avail of private healthcare services.
"Hopefully, I will have to go back to a public healthcare facility only after three more years, when my visa comes up for renewal once again. And hopefully, by then, the crowds would have lessened."
Gulf News 2003
