In an effort to cut down on the number of emergency travel documents it issues each year, the British Embassy in the UAE has come up with a series of comic strips to remind residents to safeguard their passports.
The comics illustrate various ways one can ruin or lose their passport, and are likely to be helpful to Qatar residents, too.
“You wouldn’t believe the stories we hear about lost and damaged passports,” the embassy said in a statement.
“Our embassies in the Gulf issued over 230 Emergency Travel Documents in 2016. These are not cheap and they can cause a number of issues for the person needing them.”
According to the UK Foreign Office’s website, it can cost up to £100 to replace a lost/stolen passport, and take up to six weeks to process.
Passport fails
Some of the most common passport stories include people accidentally washing them with clothes, losing track of them while on vacation or keeping the documents in reach of a dog or baby.
Cognizant of the long processing times, the comics also remind residents to plan ahead.
For example, children’s passports are only good for five years, so if families don’t want to miss their vacations, they should make sure to renew these documents first.
And some countries don’t allow in visitors whose passports are due to expire soon.
Finally, the embassy points out that police reports must be filed before a request for emergency travel documents (ETDs) can be made.
And if you lost your passport while out of the Gulf, you may not be allowed into GCC countries with just your ETDs.
Have you ever experienced a passport fail? Thoughts?