Causing delay in project's completion: ineligible people visit Nadra Centres to get Watan Cards

About two million ineligible people have visited 115 Nadra Registration Centres for obtaining Watan Cards, which has delayed completion of the project, said Tariq Malik, Deputy Chairman, National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) here on Wednesday.
The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) gave Nadra an estimate of 1.6 million flood affected people, but Nadra has received 3.2 million applications at its 115 registration centres, Malik said while talking to Business Recorder on Wednesday.
"It is the strength of Nadra's system that it has not allowed any one to dodge this system and take the Watan Card unlawfully," he said, adding that due to strong checks in the software applicants who do not belong to notified calamity hit areas are not being processed by the system.
Malik praised Muhammad Ismael from Thatha who sent Nadra authorities a letter saying that in spite of being eligible for Watan Card he does not want to take this card and bear his losses on his own. "It is height of national responsibility and others should learn a lesson," he added.
People, who are not eligible for Watan Card are making multiple attempts, have wasted time and delayed the completion of the Watan Card project, he said, adding that a person namely Abdullah from Thul area of Sindh province made 145 attempts and has wasted Nadra's time.
Giving the list of top ten multi attempters, Deputy Chairman Nadra said that Abdullah from Thul Sindh topped list with 145 attempts flowed by Imtiaz Ali of Karachi made 127 attempts on different centres, Mantar from Kotri 100 attempts, Muhammad Ali of Bhakkar 98, Bhaddar Khushk of Halla 96, Ali Gul of Karachi 90, Ghulam Muhammad of Pannu Aqil 89, Gul bibi of Essakhel 76, Moran Khatoon of Karachi 76 and Sahib Khan of Kandh Kot 71.
Nadra deputy chief said that after getting the footage of protests, Nadra took facial images of 72 demonstrators and matched it to its bio-metric database and found that 56 had already got their Watan Cards while remaining 16 were ineligible.
He said that out of 1.6 million cards as assigned by NDMA, Nadra has so far issued 1.34 million cards. "It indicates that we have completed about 85 percent of our task." Giving a break up of the distributed cards till Wednesday, Tariq Malik said that out of total 1.34 million cards distributed so far 583,000 Watan Cards were so far distributed in Punjab, 442,000 in Sindh, 187,000 in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, 57,000 in Balochistan, 2100 in Gilgit Baltistan and 4500 in AJK.
More than Rs 23 billion have so far been distributed among flood affected people through Watan Cards, which is the first time in the history of Pakistan that such a huge amount was distributed without any involvement of bureaucracy or contractors.
Responding to a question regarding the political influence in processing of Watan Card by provincial governments, Malik said that there were few chances of any political influence as after notification of calamity hit areas by provinces and their data from provinces, it was checked by Nadra system and then verified by NDMA and Provincial Disaster Management Authorities (PDMAs). "This is reason for few chances of political influence," he added.
Nadra has issued 327,000 CNICs to flood affected people, besides entertaining 3.2 million people at its centers, he said. He said that from last ten weeks there is no backlog with Nadra and people are getting their CNICs and other documents on time.