Eid rush stalls online visa processing

|By TAP Staff|Heavy rush for UAE visit visa in connection with the Eid holidays has resulted in stalling of the online visa processing system. The site that handles online processing –www.ednrd.ae—is inaccessible most of the time.

Travel plans of thousands of people who planned to visit the UAE for the Eid  holidays have been affected as they could not secure the visa on time. Some of those who applied through the site even up to 10 days before the Eid holidays complained their status was still being shown as Application in Process. The normal processing time is officially stated to be three to five working days. As a result they have had to cancel their flight tickets and change their travel schedules.

Visa agents say they are facing unduly long delays in the Immigration department as the processing has been very slow. Some of them said they were not accepting visit visa requests as they are not sure how long it is going to take for the applications to be processed.

The inability of the DNRD site to handle the heavy rush is similar to the access problems that applicants faced while applying for emirates ID in the early phase of the programme. It was, however, streamlined in due course of time, after which the process became smooth.

Probably, the capacity issue on the DNRD site will also get sorted out in due course, but as of now it is an embarrassment for initiatives like Smart City and other e-governance programmes, which are performing creditably well.