Around 2400 residency visa violators, around 400 visitors daily are estimated to visit the General Directorate of Residency department in the Ministry of Interior in six governorates to amend their status after paying fines.
MoI will be receiving expats after the deadline was extended till the end of December to allow them to fix their status, pay the fines, and get a new residency visa, Al Rai daily reported. The sources expected that around 40,000 violators will attempt to amend their status out of 130,000 estimated illegal residents.
A website for issuing barcodes was launched for expats to make prior appointments before coming in to fix their status. This step was taken to reduce overcrowding as a health precaution against the spread of the coronavirus. The administrators have been interlinked through a system to facilitate the transfer of expats from one department to another after it has fulfilled 400 appointments.
The administration of Farwaniya department has been linked with Jahra, the administration of the capital with Mubarak al-Kabeer, and Hawalli with al-Ahmadi, so the numbers are shared between them to ease pressure on departments.