Dubai, June 01: The popular Nol silver cards, used to travel on Metro, public buses and water buses, are back in the market after a gap of around four weeks, Khaleej Times has learnt.
However, the specially designed blue-silver cards, which replaced the silver cards when the latter ran out of stock at the end of April, will continue to be sold till the stock lasts.
“The silver cards are back on sale, but the blue-sliver cards will still be sold till its distributed stock finishes,” said Mohammed
Yousuf Al Mudharreb, Director of Unified Automated Fare Collection Department at the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
The silver cards went out of stock at the end of April due to the unexpected high demand, while an urgent dispatch of the cards from Europe got stuck following the eruption of Volcano in Iceland. The incident had sent plumes of ashes across the continent’s sky leading to the cancellation of most of the region’s flights for several days together.
The unexpected delay forced RTA to provide an alternative solution to its customers and avoid any inconvenience.
RTA programmed the blue cards, which it had in abundance, with silver card features and sold it at silver price of Dh20.
Al Mudharreb said that with the arrival of the dispatch from Europe, where the cards are manufactured, the stocks of all the varieties of the Nol cards are back to normal.
The RTA currently sells four varieties of Nol cards, silver, gold, blue and Red. Silver is the anonymous card available for Dh20, including an ePurse of Dh14. This non-personal card can be loaded up to Dh500.
Gold card has all the same features as that of silver with an additional privilege of access to the Gold Class compartment at a premium charge.
The Dh70 priced Blue card is a personal card bearing the photo and name of the owner and can be used only by the particular person. The card has a secure ePurse which can be loaded up to Dh500.
The fourth variety is the Red Ticket which is worth Dh2 and valid for one trip, it can be loaded up to ten trips.
Currently a registered user can apply for a Nol Blue card online as well as track the application. Registered users can also check the history of one’s Nol transactions. The RTA is soon planning to extend its online Nol services with the facility to top up the cards with credits and well as having a quick transaction history among other things.
–Agencies