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Dubai: Nehal Ahmad first started operating his "typing shop" under an umbrella at the Dubai Naturalisation and Residency Department in 1983 and today still has to use the typewriter for some of the paperwork at the Residency Department.
The typewriter became outdated in homes and offices in the late 1990s, ever since Microsoft came up with a fast and user-friendly word processing system.
Despite most government department forms now available online, the clunky machine, which evokes nostalgia among some journalists, is surprisingly still needed here today.
"There is still one per cent of 'immigration' work that needs a manual typewriter," says Ahmad, who has been running his typing institute for 25 years. You still need a typewritten form for an immigration card, or for the cancellation of a labour visa and inexplicably, for applying for online services from the Residency Department.
According to Iftikhar Ahmad who runs a typing institute in Bur Dubai, you still need a typewritten form to obtain a post office box. This form has to be typed on both sides in Arabic and English. "The size of the form is very unusual," he says. "If it was an A4 size we could have scanned it and filled it on the computer."
"I am sitting here with 10 typewriters, both in Arabic and English," says Zafar Iqbal, who runs a typing institute called Al Taj. "I have to pay the salaries of the typists, pay rent for this place. I can save all that if everything goes online."
He says rent agreements between the landlord and the tenant still have to be typed on the manual typewriter. "Why can't the Municipality go online?" he asks. The owners also complain that medical report forms from some hospitals such as Maktoum are not available free online. "You have to go there and get a token and stand in line and then get the forms," says Iqbal.
It's not all swift and quick work despite going online. For the past two months there has been a glitch. "The immigration online system is very slow," says Iftikhar. "We make the payment online and try to print, say, a visit visa application, it does not print. Then our money gets stuck, we have to apply for a refund. At least 'immigration' gives back our money in such cases. But with the Labour Department, there is no refund."
"The other thing is that in this age of globalisation, labour department forms are still in English. How many expatriates know Arabic?" asks Iftikhar, adding that some of the job designations are not translated properly in the department's handbook.
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