Identity is the crisis can't you see
Identity, Identity
X-Ray Spex
Identity
Identity, Identity
X-Ray Spex
Identity
Pal Dom has been trying to get his identity sorted out this week. Tuesday he went down to get an appointment, the website having failed to work. He queued for two hours only to be told, when he asked a guard what was happening, that he was queuing for nothing - the numbers for the day had been allocated and it was 'over' for the day.
He went back, earlier this time, on Wednesday only to find something like 400 people had had the same idea. The bloke at the front of the queue had been there since 2.30am to get pole position. Again, they ran out of numbers by the time our man got to the front.
Dogged, if nothing else, our man went down this morning at 5.25am. At 08:23am it is announced to the waiting crowd that only 50 tickets were being handed out today.
I tried using their mobile booking service. The website crashed. It doesn't work for the appointments service either - so if you want to book an appointment to get an ID card issued, you have to join the queues with my pal Dom and about 400 other hapless souls. People are even driving to Dhaid to avoid the queues.
I'm not playing the queueing up game, myself - I simply can't be bothered.
This is not working terribly well, is it chaps?
7 comments:
What's the fuss with the deadline? I believe expats arriving in the country will be able to register in the future, which is why EIDA centres will have to continue to provide "service" after January 1st.
As always, I'm happy to sit on the fence and watch everyone else round around like headless chickens.
In the meantime, speak to your bank and ensure they won't cancel your cards after New Year.
Speak to my bank?
SPEAK TO MY BANK?
ARE YOU MAAAAAD?
As you say Alexander, "snap" :-)
Not working terribly well? Of course it is, don't you listen to the EIDA?
There is no problem. There may have been a small glitch with the website but that's all sorted out now, there are plenty of forms available, they can easily deal with the over half a million people in the next six weeks.
All you have to do is make an appointment, turn up with your passport and you'll be processed. I heard one of the top EIDA men say so myself.
Oh, and anyway, if there is a bit of a rush it's all our fault. Apparently we were given months and months advance notice in a big information campaign, which tens of thousands of us failed to see or ignored.
Hey Nick, talk to your bank to get something organised? I thought you lived here!
guys, yes you can...talk to your bank.
You just have to prentend once in a while that you are not a huffy Anglo-saxon if things don't work 'like at home'.
Like many, I am not going to waste hours in a queue to make up for an unbelievably ill-thought out process and one of the worst websites I've ever encountered. Having managed to start the registration process, I managed to laugh my way though the fact that my first and middle names are important as is my grandfather's name and my mother's first name - but my surname seems to have no relevance. I managed to get through the bit that says I was born in the UK, but I still have to fill in my Emirate of Birth (I chose Dubai). But page 2 defeated me. I've filled in everything, but it refuses to go any further. No error messages such as the standard helpful "some problem has occurred" or "please avail of help". It just refuses to do anything when I press "next".
Since I never go into the bank or talk to any of their "customer service operatives" if I can possibly avoid it, presumably my account will still function ? Who knows ? Who cares ? It'll all sort itself out in the end. Probably.
The whole thing is a cock-up. No one I've spoken to about it knows exactly what/when/where/how to go about the registration, due to the website being incredibly frustrating. I came this close (picture thumb & forefinger pinched together) to being deported last week. I've given up worrying. Sod 'em. :-)
Apparently the advertising campaign months ago to tell us to register by the end of the year was only run in the Arabic media, and in Arabic. So now it's the fault of the 80 per cent of the population who are non-Arabic speaking expats that they left it to the last minute - priceless
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