You must have surely heard of at least one "Malayali in the Gulf" joke. Jokes apart, the Malayali is a integral part of the "Gelf". And in a first, Malayalam becomes one among the five languages that will be added to the Emirates Identity Authority website. Initiatives on social media by Malayalis residing in the UAE has been on for a while now and seems to have borne fruit.Urdu, Tagalog, Russian and Mandarin are the other languages to be added to its website, offering information and guidance on procedures. The Emirates ID had conducted online surveys to add one more language to the existing two languages already in place, Arabic and English. The introduction of five new languages is expected to increase accessibility to citizens from India and other parts of the world.Abdulaziz Al Maamari, Director of Government and Social Communication at the Emirates ID said, “The addition of the new languages would allow the customers to learn in their own languages about the procedures for registration in the population register, issuance, renewal and replacement of ID cards, necessary documents for getting the services rendered and the fee for each service. The idea behind the initiative is to make our website and services more accessible and customer-friendly”.With a huge number of Keralites residing in the UAE, the initiative is expected to increase accessibility to government services.