Eida card delivery system frustrates public

Applicants for the national identity card are becoming increasingly frustrated by the failure of the project operators to deliver the cards to their addresses, with some of them saying they had been told to travel long distances to collect it.

The Emirates National Identity Authority (Eida), which is involved in an ambitious identity project in the second largest Arab economy, has pledged to the public to make the delivery process easier by sending cards straight to their addresses.

But thousands of them are still receiving texts on their mobile phones telling them to go in person to the post office and collect their cards.

“Eida has sent me three texts so far telling me to go to Bani Yas to collect my card….I applied in Abu Dhabi and I live in Abu Dhabi so I cannot understand why I should travel all this way to get my card,” said Nadir Saeed, an Abu Dhabi resident who applied for a card renewal a month ago.

“I have never been to Bani Yas before and I wonder why they are doing this…why don’t they just send it to my address as I was required to write it on the application…I am worried that if I don’t go and collect the card, I might lose it because Eida has warned that those not collected in a month will be destroyed.”

Another applicant, Ahmed Mohammed, said he had just received a text from the Abu Dhabi post office telling him he must come and collect the card.

“This means I have to leave my work and go to the post office…I could be absent from my work for hours as there are always big queues in the post office,” he said, quoted by the Dubai-based Emirat Alyoum daily.

Abu Riad, another Abu Dhabi resident, said he finally went to the post office and collected the cards for his wife and children but that his own card had not arrived yet although they all applied at the same time. “I have been waiting for nearly four months but the card has not arrived yet,” he said.

The paper quoted an unnamed official at the post office as saying they had not received any instructions from Eida to send the cards to their addresses.

Eida’s figures showed an average 8,500 cards are being sent daily to their owners compared with 3,200 cards last year following the completion of plans to expand printing offices through the UAE. Over the past six months, nearly 500,000 cards have been sent out while around 280,000 cards have not been collected by their owners despite repeated notifications by Eida.