Chaos as licence, ‘Iqama’ link move provokes public unease – ‘Time wasted, absence from work’

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KUWAIT CITY, Jan 7: The decision issued by the Ministry of Interior to link the validity of the driving license with the duration of residence permit has negatively affected the traffic departments in most governorates, particularly the Farwaniya Governorate due to the number of persons who filed to renew their driver’s licence, reports Al-Qabas daily.

According to sources reducing the validity of the driver’s licence from 10 years to one or two years depending on duration of the residence permit has doubled the number of those seeking to renew their driver’s licences. Certainly this number is expected to jump tenfold over the years and people will queue to renew the licences because a majority of the drivers currently hold licences which were issued with the 10 years validity.

According to the daily, the Farwaniya Traffic Department is ill equipped to handle the rush of people because of new decision has been applied without preparing the necessary infrastructure and sufficient staff. It has been reported 140 motorists are entertained every day and many of them have to wait in queue for more than 8 hours to be the ‘lucky one’ while those who are unlucky have to return the next day and so on and as a result of which many of them feel they are unable to drive their cars and their work has been disrupted. All these problems and many more confided were summed up by those who went to Farwaniya Traffic Department to renew their driving licences, many of those who were unsuccessful.

One of the Arab expatriates who identified himself only as M.K. said the renewal of driving licences for expatriates is during the evening only from 16:00 to 19:00 hours while the mornings are set aside exceptionally for Kuwaitis only.

He added the time is limited and that some of the expatriates who have ‘wasta’ get their way around but those who don’t have, like him, have to come again and again. He said he was visiting the department for the third day but still could not complete the transaction because he did not have complete set of documents.

To make matters worse, he added, there are no clear instructions and no one explains what documents are required for the renewal of the licence since for different category of licence a different set of documents are required. He went on to say, the information is not available even on the ministry website.

He said to complete the transaction a person must come at 12 noon to register the name and wait until 7 pm for the completion of the transaction, which means waiting for 8 consecutive hours if you want to renew the license. People have been suffering since the issuance of the decision – the decision that has been resented by a large number of people because of time wasted and absence from work.

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