JEDDAH, 31 January 2008 — A disappointed crowd of British visa applicants gathered outside the recently opened Visa Application Center in Jeddah yesterday. Applicants were unhappy as the center, which relies heavily on sophisticated IT to deliver visas rapidly, could not process their requests.
“We do regret that this happened,” said Andrew Turner, deputy head of mission at the British Embassy in Riyadh. “We normally turn round a visa in one day and rely on IT to enable us to offer the best visa service available.”
Turner explained that personal data taken during applications were entirely secure and that there was no risk to applications from the system failure. He also confirmed that the glitch, which shut the system down, had been attended to.
“The crowd of visitors was largely a backlog of visa applicants,” he said, adding that although there would be a delay of a few days the service would be running once the backlog is cleared.
The new visa application system, which gathers biometric data from applicants in line with new international requirements and uses the Internet to allow applicants to furnish information online, has boosted the “one-day visa” rate into the high 90 percent success ate.
