All expatriate residents in the UAE travelling to Saudi Arabia, for Haj and Umrah or otherwise, will soon have to give their biometrics for entry into the Kingdom.
All such applicants planning a visit to Saudi will have to provide their biometrics at VFS TasHeel, which manages and administers the Saudi Arabian visa applications, senior officials of the firm said on Monday.
VFS TasHeel, a joint venture between the global visa-processing leader, VFS Global (a division of Kuoni Travel Group, Switzerland) and TasHeel, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, does not handle visas for Haj and Umrah. Such visas continue to be processed by travel agents even after the visa processing services were outsourced to this company in 2012.
However, as per the new instructions from the Saudi’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), officials said, visa applicants going for the pilgrimages will also have to visit the UAE offices of VFS TasHeel to capture their biometrics including a digital photo and fingerprinting. According to them, the move is to make the database secure and centralised.
Raghu Athimoolam, COO of VFS TasHeel International, said the Saudi government is likely to make biometrics-based visa issuance mandatory within three to six months.
“We cannot give an exact timeframe for the launch of the system. However, we have started a pilot project to scan the biometrics of about 100 applicants per day to ensure the system is functioning smooth now itself,” he told reporters during a media familarisation visit of VFS TasHeel’s visa service centre (VSC) at Wafi Mall in Dubai.
“The biometrics that (will) soon begin at VFS TasHeel is a simple and quick procedure that only takes a few minutes to complete at the VFS TasHeel VSCs. More information on biometrics will be made available once the service is launched in the coming months.”
Imran Khan, Country Manager of VFS TasHeel, said nine counters had already been readied to record the biometrics of applicants at the Dubai VSC. “We are making seating arrangements to incorporate the applicants coming from various agents after processing their documents for Haj and Umrah visas.”
He added a nominal fee could be charged from applicants of Haj and Umrah visas for the service of recording biometrics. However, applicants seeking any other types of visa through the VSCs will not have to pay anything extra for capturing their biometrics.
Applicants can make appointments through the VFS TasHeel website or by visiting any of its VSCs.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sajila Saseendran
Quelle/Source: Khaleej Times, 14.01.2014
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