Noor Mohammed (Noor) from Qatar , The Qatar Visa Center (QVC), which comes as part of the first phase of the fingerprinting and biometrics project, will also facilitate medical examination and signing of contracts for the expatriate workers will open in Bangladesh soon, Major General Abdullah Khalifa al Mohannadi, director of Visa Support Services at the Ministry of Interior (MoI), said during a seminar held yesterday by the Department of Visa Support Services.
=Members of the Bangladeshi community and employees of local companies were apprised of the various stages of the recruitment procedures through the visa centers of Qatar. Major Abdullah explained the benefits that these visa centers will be providing to both employers and employees and their role in facilitating the procedures for recruitment of expatriate workers. The services will include fingerprinting, registration of vital data, medical examinations and the signing of employment contracts. The project aims to offer the latest medical check-up and bio-fingerprinting systems to provide efficient, world-class services to ensure integrated e-services in a fast and easy manner. This step comes within the framework of the expatriate workers recruitment strategy that simplifies employment visa procedures and protects the rights of all parties involved in the process.
The Qatar visa centers abroad enable both employers and workers to perform their role accurately through an integrated recruitment system. The registration process is carried out by the employers through the Ministry of Interior’s website and the applicant’s reference number can be obtained through the center. The workers need to just visit the Qatar Visa Center in their country and register after which they receive their contracts for signing. Following this, they go for fingerprinting and registration of vital data and medical examination. The newly to be opened QVC also enables government, semi-government institutions, private companies, and recruitment agencies from those countries to complete work visa procedures through a single window ensuring a simplified and quick process. Furthermore, expatriates will be able to review and sign their employment contracts while they are still in their home country.
The final stage comprises getting the final approval and the issuance of visa. While these procedures take place at the center for an hour, the health test results are ready within 48 hours. These centers aim to protect the rights of expatriate workers and ensure speedy completion of procedures once they enter the country.
This also helps avoid cases where an expatriate comes to Qatar and then has to return to his country if he is not eligible for employment. On the other hand, this will end a monopoly controversial attestation of visa, contracts signing so far carried by Bangladesh embassy in Qatar. A majority of Bangladesh expatriates in Doha expressed their anger and dismay over Bangladesh embassy’s scrutiny & many of them complaining of some wrongdoing involving the procedures in the embassy. The embassy procedure involves even Qatari national (man or woman) to personally visit embassy premises in order to clarify their recruitment which many Qatari nationals felt embarrassed and reluctant to do so. No other manpower exporting country’s embassies ever introduced such eccentric procedure thus impacting significantly in the recruitment process since its introduction. Many believe that the centers will facilitate the recruitment process by providing a more transparent and efficient recruitment system by promoting e-government services as the first choice for applicants.
The writer is the bureau chief of Today’s World News 24 ( www.twnews24.com )