Big news! Expats can soon do residency procedures at home country before flying to Qatar

Qatar has been doing quite a bit of work in recent times to make things easier for expatriates to arrive in Qatar and do jobs.

Yesterday, Qatar went one step further and made it easier for people to initiate Qatar residency permit procedures at home before flying into the country, reported Gulf Times.      

The landmark change, announced by the Ministry of Interior (MoI), will initially help Qatar-bound workers from eight countries to make their trips smoother.

Towards this end, the MoI signed an agreement with Singapore-based Biomet to complete applicants’ medical checkup, record bio-metric data and fingerprint and sign work contracts at their home countries before coming to Qatar, reported The Peninsula.

The move will help bring down the cases of rejection of expat workers on account of their failing medical tests. Currently, such cases stand at 3% of the total number of workers. 

Eight countries — India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines and Tunisia — have been included in the pilot project’s first phase as these nations contribute to about 80% of the total workforce in the country, reported Qatar Tribune.

“The project will be piloted in Sri Lanka within four months by opening a service centre in Colombo, followed by the opening of such centres in the other seven countries,” said General Directorate of Passports’ Director General Brigadier Mohamed Ahmad Al Ateeq.

There will be seven service centres in India (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kochi and Lucknow), four in Pakistan (Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar), three each in Bangladesh (Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong) and Indonesia (Jakarta, Semarang, Bandung), two in the Philippines (Manila, Cebu) and one each in Nepal (Kathmandu), Sri Lanka (Colombo) and Tunisia (Tunis).
“The facilities may be extended in future to some more countries if there’re large number of job applicants from those destinations,” Al Ateeq added.

Brigadier Al Ateeq said the new initiative will help the individual to start his or her work with their employers soon after entering Qatar.

“It would also ease the employer to start the procedures for transferring the worker’s salary to the bank in the very first month of his work,” he told Gulf Times.

The project’s second phase will include the authorisation of educational certificates and other documents and services like wage protection of the workers.

Once initial procedures are completed in their home country, expatriates need not undergo any further visa procedures on their entry to Qatar. The medical checkup will be approved electronically by the E-governance service.