2 April, 2005	Saturday	22 Safar 1426

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ISLAMABAD, April 1: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Friday announced that the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) was introducing an e-billing system to facilitate the consumers to pay their utility bills.

During his visit to the Nadra Headquarters, the prime minister was told that e-kiosks would be set up throughout the country for payment of utility bills.

The prime minister formed a committee comprising Salman Shah, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance, and interior secretary to finalize the project within one-and-a-half month.

The authority will provide e-billing facility by charging some amount to be paid by the public utilities on per transaction.

He was told that the authority had the largest fully integrated database of automatic finger identification and facial recognition system and the record of around 67 million citizens.

The prime minister was told that the number of data acquisition centres linked to the central database would increase to 290 by June this year. These centres have the production facility of over 100,000 cards a day.

Mr Aziz visited different sections of the Nadra Headquarters. He was shown a demonstration of vehicle tracking system, automatic border control linked with the new machine readable passport, a utility bill kiosk, RFID-enabled driving licence, online testing system, Pakistan Address Library Project and Child Registration System.

Pakistan has also become the first country to have successfully implemented the world’s first e-passport project according to the ICAO standards and has been declared a finalist in the card technology.

Shaukat Aziz was also told that a number of countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Morocco, Syria, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Turkey had shown interest in various projects launched by the Nadra.

Later, talking to mediapersons, Mr Aziz said the authority had been directed to set up kiosks across the country to facilitate the people to pay their power, gas and phone bills round the clock without undergoing the trouble of standing in queues for hours.

He emphasized the need for computerization of the land record of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to check land- grabbing, use of fake documents and illegal sale and purchase of property. This, he said, would greatly benefit the people, boost the value of real estate and encourage the housing sector.

Mr Aziz said Nadra had also been directed to launch motor vehicle registration and vehicle identification and tracking system, initially from Islamabad.

The project, he said, would check the incidents of car theft, help in keeping track of registrations, their renewal, change of ownership and tracking in case of vehicle theft.