Jeddah: A 62-year-old Hyderabadi woman, a resident of Toli Chowki, was stopped by Passport officials at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. Shocked by the unexpected development she was told that she had overstayed and violated the visa rules and was sent back from the airport without boarding a Hyderabad-bound flight.
She was one of the scores of such Indians who landed into trouble without knowing the exact procedures and rules of tourist visas. The woman’s husband had arranged a tourist visa for her from a traveling agent in Hyderabad instead of applying for a family visit visa.
Like her, every day hundreds of Indians arrive in oil-rich countries as Saudi Arabia opened its doors to the world through its new tourist visa. Alike other neighbors, Saudi recently eased its tourism and visiting visa process where the number of Indians visiting the country is large numbers.
Also, some Indians misuse the easily available tourist visas including working in the IT sector to join here landing to execute jobs for clients in the Kingdom besides much skilled youth coming into scouting for job opportunities.
The multiple-entry tourist visa is valid for one year from the date of issuance, and the permissible period of stay is 90 days. The single-entry tourist visa is valid for three months from the date of issuance, and the permissible period of stay is 30 days. The gray area for many Indians is the validity of their visa and period of stay, which many failed to understand and errantly landed into trouble by exceeding the period of stay.
Tourist visas of any country generally do not exceed a period of stay beyond 90 days and even an Indian tourist e-visa staying period not exceeding 60 days.
All those Indians arriving on tourist visas were in a false belief that visa validity would be one year for multiple entries and staying accordingly. They leave Saudi Arabia for 90 days to neighboring countries such as Bahrain and Jordan and enter again to stay for a further period.
“This is where most of these visitors commit blunder”, explains Muzammil Shaikh, Telugu NRI activist in Riyadh, who handles several such cases. The same was echoed by Zaheer Baig, another NRI activist based in Al Khobar.
Muzammil said that many Indians are stranded in Saudi Arabia for an exceeding period of stay beyond 90 days for multiple-entry and struggling to pay hefty fines for errantly overstaying.
Unlike family visit visas, multiple-entry tourist visas are not extendable after 90 days even if the holder leaves the Kingdom and enters again, he added. The total period of stay should not exceed 90 days.
Saudi Arabia has raised eyebrows with its goal of attracting 100 million visitors by 2030 as part of the Vision 2030 reform agenda intended to diversify the oil-dependent economy and open up to the world.
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