Your first weeks on Aruba: Censo, cedula and the 30-day window

In your first weeks on Aruba you register with Censo, collect your cedula and sign up with the AZV. Do it in the right order and you are fully set up in about a month. Each link in the chain wants to see the one before:

• The DIMAS decision, the decision on your admission, opens the door at Censo: the Civil Registry and Population Register, where you register as a resident.
• Your Censo registration opens the extract (the proof that you are registered), the cedula (Aruba's identity card) and the AZV (Aruba's health insurance).
• The extract opens the bank and the personal number from the tax office.

Registration takes two weeks at most. After that you collect the extract, which costs Afl. 5. You register with the AZV within thirty days of your registration.

One detail on the government page costs families their day: you book a separate, consecutive appointment for each family member. Everyone attends in person, the children too.

The pitfall is your driving licence. As soon as you live on Aruba, your Dutch licence is no longer valid there. The Bureau Examen Rijbewijzen, Aruba's driving licence office, does not register it; you have to convert it. For that you need a statement from the RDW, the Dutch vehicle and licence authority, no more than six months old. So you apply for it before you leave.

What do I do in week one?

Go to Censo, by appointment at the head office at Schoolstraat 2. The digital counter Digilok is only for Dutch citizens born on Aruba and for whoever re-registers within five years. So you come in person.

You bring, in original and copy:

• a valid passport;
• your birth certificate (if you were born outside the Kingdom, with apostille or legalisation);
• the rental or purchase contract, or written permission from the homeowner with a copy of their ID;
• the proof of deregistration from the Netherlands;
• a marriage or divorce certificate, where applicable;
• a recent DIMAS decision showing there is no objection to your settlement.

What follows in weeks two and three?

Once the registration is processed, you collect the extract. That is the proof that you are actually registered. You present it for "a connection to water and electricity, Cable, the opening of a bank account".

At the same service you apply for the cedula, the identity card for bank transactions and counters. If you need a permit, the cedula's validity runs with that permit. So every annual renewal at DIMAS also means a new cedula.

Then the most important clock of your first month: register with the AZV within thirty days of your Censo registration. If you make that window, the health insurance covers you retroactively from your registration date. If you miss it, cover only starts on your application date. How the AZV works and what the premium is, is in healthcare on Aruba.