Indians working and living across the Gulf nations are now encountering another problem concerning the Covid vaccine certificates. However, a few pleas have been filed to address the same. As a result, the NRIs can assure themselves that they won’t encounter any problem while returning to their host countries after updating their passport numbers with the vaccination certificates.
The hiccup is that the non-resident Indians, who came back to India amid the second wave of Covid-19 and eventually got inoculated against the virus, are now finding it tough to get the vaccination certificates accepted by the Gulf administrators. It is because Saudi Arabia and UAE are not recognising India’s CoWin portal.
Indian workers, who got both jabs and want to join back their organisations in Gulf countries, are unable to update their health status both online and offline in Gulf countries. This is because administrators over there are not accepting a hard copy of the Indian vaccine certificate with a QR scan code. This has prompted them to desperately request admins in the Gulf countries to approve their vaccine certificates.
The Gulf authorities mandate using their own indigenously developed mobile apps like Tawakkalna (Saudi Arabia), Al Hosen (UAE), Shlonik (Kuwait) and Tarassud (Oman) rather than updating health status on the app that restricts people from entering public and working places. The NRIs, who have been vaccinated in Gulf countries, should not worry as their health status is being updated automatically.
For the NRIs who got vaccinated in India and came back to the Gulf countries, the Indian embassy is offering help by discussing the issue with the Gulf authorities.
“The Indian Embassy is looking into the matter and trying its best to update the NRI’s health status in Saudi Arabia while discussing the issue with the concerned health authorities,” Indian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Dr. Ausaf Sayeed was quoted as saying during a meeting in Jeddah.
Further explaining the problem, the envoy said that the problem did not lay in CoWin. Although the vaccine registration portal by the Indian government was an authentic digital platform to verify the vaccination data of an Indian, some NRIs have been approaching travel agents for attestation of Indian vaccination certificates by the Saudi Arabian Embassy located in Delhi. There is no mention of the attestation requirement by the Saudi Arabia officials and GCC. However, the NRIs are trying to verify the documents from the embassies.
Citing an example, the envoy stated that various travel and recruitment agencies in Hyderabad have been providing vaccination certificate translation and attestation. NRIs are reportedly paying a minimum sum of Rs 6500 as attestation charge to such agencies so that they can verify their vaccination certificate by the embassies.
