Among the major issues that expats face in Qatar are related to transportation and immigration policies.
Qatar is one of the countries that are highly dependent on foreign workers, despite the fact, the immigration law of the country has been complex until the New Immigration Law came into enactment in 2017. The new law gave a bit clarity about provisions of exit, entry, residence and citizenship.
Traffic is another issue that occupied Qatar’ greatly. As per the last Qatar Traffic Report commuters spent an average of 109 extra hours on roads due to traffic congestion in Qatar in 2016 as against 102 extra hours in 2015. The increasing traffic congestions were caused due to various reasons increase in number of automobiles, construction blockades, diversions, lack of infrastructure and so on. As Ashghal is moving ahead with it’s ‘sustainable infrastructure drive ‘the construction diversions may again prove to be a major issue.
In order to understand the performances of the existing immigration and traffic services, the Department of Planning and Quality in the Ministry of Interior (MoI) has started a survey seeking opinion on the services provided by the General Directorate of Borders Passports and Expatriates Affairs, the unified services department at the Mesaimeer Service Center, and the General Directorate of Traffic in Madinat Khalifa-South.
The objective of the survey is to gain feedback on the services provided by the government departments to the expats and is to run till Thursday. The survey teams are distributing questionnaires, which include questions about the procedures carried out by the Department of Expatriate Affairs, the Department of Standard Services, and the General Directorate of Traffic.
The questions will be focussed on reception of people, speed of completion of their transactions and the response to their inquiries by staff and officers. Moreover the question will also seeks opinion on the facilities provided by the departments, including the provision of suitable waiting places for visitors, car parking, and services for people with special needs.
As per Telecommunications Department Director Brig Abdul Rahman Majid al Sulaiti statement in Qatar Tribune “The MoI attaches great importance to such surveys as it has an effective role in supporting the decision-making process and identifying the efficiency of the services, its shortcomings and obstacles to the termination of transactions through the electronic systems provided by the MoI on its website and the service of Metrash2.”
The survey will focus on understanding user experience of people to develop the efficiency of services, the extent of their knowledge about the availability of services provided by the departments and at the same time is also an effort to motivate them to complete their transactions online.
Though this is an initiative to take feedback from the people for improving the existing services online and offline, it will only be effective if considerable number of people participate in the survey and their feedback gets due consideration for improving the policy process later.
