Residence Card Instead Of Civil ID Card For Expats

Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior is working on a plan that would introduce ‘Residency Cards’ instead of Civil IDs for expats, Al Rai reported.

The General Department of Residency Affairs aims to issue a special magnetic card for the expats in Kuwait which will contain all his/her data which will be used in all state ministries and agencies to deal with it formally and thus end use of Civil ID card (called bitaqa-almadaniyah).

An informed source told Al Rai, Residency Affairs is working on this mechanism that will allow the residency card to have all the person’s details so that it can be used for all formal transactions.
The first step is to limit the civil ID cards only to Kuwaiti citizens; this will reduce congestion at the Public Authority for Civil Information office. At present, PACI is solely responsible for the processing and issuing of Civil IDs for both expats and citizens. Since its establishment in 1982, PACI has granted around 30 million Civil IDs.

Moreover, handing over the responsibility to the Residency Affairs department at the Ministry of Interior will limit the load on the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI).

The project aims at reducing illegal activity by ensuring that all information is connected in one card, as sometimes expired Civil IDs are used outside of Kuwait by some criminals, the source added.