Saudis owing govt money won’t get IDS renewed

RIYADH: Single or married Saudi citizens who have not settled their financial obligations to any of the government bodies will not be able to renew their national identity cards, local daily Al-eqtisadiah reported Thursday, quoting a senior civil affairs official.

“Citizens who are included in the Financially Wanted System (FWS), which links the civil affairs department in various regions with the traffic police, Passport Department, recruitment offices, governorates and other government departments, will be prevented from renewing their national identity cards,” Abdul Rahman Al-hussain, deputy director of the Department of Civil Affairs, said.

He, however, said the prevention did not include the families and other dependents that can be added to the family card.

Al-hussain explained that if the fines and other financial obligations were not registered against the citizen in the FWS, he could have his ID renewed. Meanwhile, the Civil Affairs Department said in its annual report for the year 2011 that it had issued or renewed more than a million IDS and had processed more than 6.6 million paper works on the Central Civil Registry.

The report explained that the paper works included issuance or renewal of IDS, compensation for the lost ones, giving computer printouts to citizens on request, registering births, deaths and divorces, issuing family cards, making job amendments, processing nationality procedures and organizing records using the stateof-the-art technology.