LAHORE, Feb 13: The National Database and Registration Authority is introducing a fast track for the people who for some reasons want their computerized National Identity Cards prepared on urgent basis.

Interior Minister Moinud Din Haider will inaugurate the facility at the Abbot Road office of the Authority on Friday.

Under the fast track, the Nadra will provide photograph and finger printing on at its premises. The application will still need attestation by the union council Nazim concerned or some gazetted officer. The card will be provided within a week of submitting the completed application with the urgent fee. The officials concerned, however, refused to disclose the amount before the formal launch of the facility.

Explaining the card preparation process, the Nadra director, Col Muhammad Talha Saeed, said the cards were printed in Nadra’s Islamabad office. He said the data and photographs submitted at various Nadra offices were transferred there through electronic mail.

The mail received from Nadra offices across the country, he said, queued up in Islamabad.

The Authority, he said, had so far prepared 3.4 million NICs for applicants from Lahore, Multan and Sargodha divisions. Half of these, he said, had been distributed. He said the pace of distribution would pick up after Feb 20 when the task would be entrusted to post offices under an agreement signed recently.

Answering a question about the status of the people who could not get themselves registered during the 1998 census, he said there would be no problem in issuing computerized NICs to them. “They, too, will be issued their cards after the routine verification.”

He said the Nadra had appointed 200 representatives in Lahore alone to facilitate the people.