KARACHI, April 18: Over 25,000 people returned their computerized national identity cards to the officials of the Pakistan Post Office which was tasked to distribute CNICs by the National Database Registration Authority.
PPO postmen told Dawn that more than 25,000 people had returned their CNICs because they contained errors, including wrong entry of names, father’s name, addresses, dates of birth and gender.
Senior PPO officials said by April 16 the postal department had received around 750,000 computerized national identity cards. “At least, 350,000 CNICs were received from Rawalpindi and 400,000 CNICs were received from the Karachi branch of Nadra. The PPO also received those CNICs which the courier companies engaged by Nadra had failed to distribute. All CNICs have been cleared from the district mail office.”
They added that while the PPO would get Rs7 per CNIC from Nadra, the postmen would receive Rs0.7 per card and the remaining Rs0.3 would be distributed among clerks and sorters.
“The delivery of the CNICs is being done from the 56 delivery post offices all over the city.”
They said the rejected CNICs were being returned to the district registration officers of Nadra.
It is, however, not clear how many CNICs the PPO has returned to Nadra. Despite repeated attempts, the deputy postmaster general, Sindh, Syed Azmat Ali Khan, could not be contacted.
A postman told Dawn that Nadra had made unbelievably ridiculous errors in CNICs. “I delivered a CNIC to a house on Wednesday. The CNIC belonged to one Zoorawar Khan, but the gender of Zoorawar Khan had been mentioned as ‘female’.
Another postman said he delivered a card to an apartment in Garden East. “The name of the applicant for the CNIC was Waheed Khan, but for reasons best known to Nadra officials, the applicant was named Waheed Murad.”
The postman added that in another instance a woman had been marked unmarried by Nadra officials while she had three young children. “The woman’s children wanted to take the form to the headquarters of Nadra but I advized them to return the CNIC with the corrections made on another form so that next time the mistake could be avoided.”
In December last year, 23 forms of CNICs submitted by people were found in a garbage dump in Saddar. These forms were found by an unknown man who had delivered all the forms to a residence of one of the applicants in Shireen Jinnah Colony, Clifton.
Most of the applicants whose forms were found resided in Shireen Jinnah Colony and its adjoining areas, such as Generalabad, Keamari and Bhutta Village.
However, officials of Nadra disputed the claim saying that all the forms were carrying objections and sent back by their delivery staff to the applicants’ addresses so that they could remove the objections and submit forms again to acquire their respective computerized national identity cards.
