Qatar starts issuing Resident Cards to expatriates

Qatar began issuing sticker-free Residency Permit (RP) to expatriates and their families on Monday.

RPs are not being stamped on people's passports any more. They are rather being issued new ID cards that bear more details about the holder than before and they are now known as Residence Cards.

Hamad al Kuwari, head of the Premium Customers Division at Q-Post said that an agreement has been concluded with the Ministry of Interior to start the delivery of residence cards to companies and individuals.

Al Kuwari said that almost 4,000-8,000 cards will be delivered daily to companies and individuals from now on until everyone in the country is sticker-free.

There are three types of services for delivery with different fees in Q-Post. The first one is a monthly subscription of QR1,500 for companies having lots of transactions from one thousand to ten thousand workers.

The second system is delivery of cards with a fee of QR100 for every 10 cards, and thirdly 1-4 cards with QR20 for each card.

The cards are delivered within 24 hours inside Doha and 48 hours outside Doha at present. We are trying to deliver the cards on the same day.

the new residence card holds several security features that should not be tampered and cannot be faked as well as it carries data of the card holder.

He said that the advantages of the new system include speedy completion of transactions where the passports are not needed for sticker printing, as well as the number of customers visiting the departments will decrease dramatically.

the General Directorate of Nationality and Expatriates Affairs and the Q-Post work in cooperation to deliver the cards through mail to the customers. For this the customer should use electronic system, and choose the delivery service through the post-office.

Once the fees are paid the card will be handed to the postal officer who will deliver the card to the concerned person. [Read more on The Peninsula]