NADRA Launches Secure Cards for Afghan Refugees

The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is launching ‘secure cards’ for registration of more than 1.75 million Afghan refugees, NADRA Deputy Chairman Tariq Malik stated this in a press briefing while launching the Islamabad site of SCAC registration.

The authority has registered 2.15 million Afghan citizens and issued 1.7 million PVC-based cards to Afghan citizens, the cards issued under UNHCR supervision had United Nations on Pakistani national institutions and software engineering capabilities of NADRA,” he said. NADRA stand among the top 50 companies in the world in identity management industry.

UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Dr. Imran Zaib, Joint Secretary of Ministry of SAFRON and senior officials of UNHCR and NADRA were present on the occasion.

Tariq Malik said that project includes conversion of PVC based PoR cards into Teslin cards, issuance of birth certificates to registered Afghans, registration of unregistered members of registered families, acquisition of latest biometrics and demographic information of Afghans and optimisation of verification / validation procedure of PoR card.
“It is in the best interest of both Pakistan and Afghanistan that we help UNHCR to register our Afghan brothers and sisters, as it would provide them a legal status to reside in Pakistan,” said Tariq Malik.

He said in March, the government had extended the stay of registered Afghan nationals till December 31, 2012 while the pilot project was launched on August 18, 2010 in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and in Quetta. He said later SCAC operations were launched throughout the country on September 24 from 44 centres simultaneously.

He said in 23 days after the launch of SCAC operations, 159,338 applicants are processed so far, 85948 cards have been produced, 22,073 cards have been delivered and 4384 birth certificates have been issued to the applicants. Project targeted all provinces of Pakistan collectively having 1,964,188 Afghan Nationals.

He said for this project NADRA has to arrange deployment of 62 online SCAC centres, production and issuance of 1.75 million Teslin based cards, printing and issuance of 1.0 million Birth Certificates, registration and issuance of PoR card to 200,000 UMRF from 9 designated centres and System Development and updating Afghan Citizens Database.
He said total 44 centres are operational across the country while 22 in KPK, 12 in Balochistan, 6 in Islamabad, one in Lahore, one in Sargodha and 2 in Karachi sites are working to register the Afghan nationals.