By Shafaat Ahmed www.khaleejtimes.com
In an initiative similar to the integration of vehicle insurance companies on its website, the RTA is planning to have all the eye test centres in Dubai linked to its online system.
Once linked, the system will work the same way as the insurance procedure, where an applicant can choose an optician and book the services before the renewal of driving licences. Though the test could be done only by personally visiting the outlets, the results would be sent online directly to the Licensing Agency (LA).
“We are working on having all the opticians in Dubai listed on our website and linked to our system, so that they would be able to enter the eye test results directly in our system. Once the project goes live we will stop accepting the paper certificates of eye test results currently mandatory for the renewal of driving licences,” said Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyan, the CEO of LA, revealing the details of the project.
He said that a dedicated team from his agency is working closely with the Dubai Health Authority (DHA), which is the regulator of opticians in the emirate, to have the system in place as soon as possible.
“Right now we are working out the modalities of automating the process with DHA. In the process that currently works DHA issues a number of books of certificates for opticians to certify the test results against a nominal fee and the procedure involves a lot of paper work between us, the opticians and DHA. Under the new system, this will change and we are trying to make it a paperless system,” he said.
He added that a software will replace these forms and all the linked opticians would be able to access the software and enter the results of the applicants directly. The RTA would then issue reports to DHA on the number of tests done by each optician.
He said that “though it’s a complicated project involving three parties, we are confident that the project would be launched within the next two months.”
As reported earlier by Khaleej Times, the Licensing Agency is also working on another big project which will enable a select few opticians to renew driving licences following the eye tests done by them. However, Bahrozyan said that the work on the project is going slow as the agency is testing other channels like Contact Centre and online services launched recently to renew driving licences.
“We have already started the talks with a few prominent opticians and we have got a positive response, but since we launched two other channels for the renewal of licences recently we are currently checking whether we need an additional medium for the service and if the survey shows greater demand than supply we will definitely hasten the process.”
The system, if launched, will make the optical centres the fourth channel available for the renewal of driving licences; three others being the Customer Service Centre, Phone Service (8009090) and the online service.
