The General Directorate of Passports (GDP) has activated “Wasil,” a document delivery service, in Riyadh, sources said on Saturday.

Maj. Gen. Suleiman Al-Yahya, GDP director-general, launched the service and confirmed that the Passport Directorate is seeking to achieve GDP’s goal by providing services to clients online and by fully implementing the concept of an e-government.

Service activation has been followed up by the Ministry of Interior.

Lt. Col. Ahmad Al-Lehaidan, GDP spokesman, said, “The service aims to deliver residence cards to beneficiaries of the e-Passports system, known as ‘Absher,’ following online issuance or renewal.”

He further said the service would soon be available across the Kingdom.

Al-Lehaidan said that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of subscribers to the “Absher” service over the past year, with over 2 million users.

He said that 759,498 exit and re-entry visas were processed electronically in a period of 78 days compared with 548,491 through the Passport Department. In addition, 990,313 residence permit renewals were completed online compared with 1,506,009 through the Passport Department.

Lt. Col. Saad Al-Omari, director of the e-Services division, said that around 300 residents have benefitted from the document delivery service so far.

He emphasized that the service requires registration with the “Absher” system to be able to avail of online services and registration to the “Wasil” mailing address for document delivery.

He added that e-services currently include issuance and cancelation of exit and re-entry visas, issuance and cancelation of final exit visas, issuance and cancelation of travel permits and the issuance and renewal of residence permits, which represented around 53 percent of the total number of transactions made online.