ISLAMABAD, Nov 27: The National Database and Registration Authority’s bill payment machines will start receiving bills from next week. In this connection, Nadra is likely to announce opening of their bill machines enabling the public to pay their utility bills received during December through these machines.

According to an announcement by Nadra on Sunday, initially consumers in Karachi and Islamabad will be able to pay their electricity bills. Besides, consumers of Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) in Karachi can also pay their gas bills.

For this purpose, 36 machines have been installed at various parts of Karachi at Nadra swift registration centres (NSRCs), SSGC customer facilitation centres (CFCs) and Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) located in Gulistan-i-Johar.

Similarly, four machines have been deployed at Karachi Company area in Islamabad. By early next year the bill machine network will be further expanded in Karachi and Islamabad while other major cities including Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Quetta and Sukkur will be provided the facility.

Overall the number of these machines will grow up to 275 to 280 by early next year and up to 500 by June 30, 2006.

At present bills of SSGC, KESC and Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) can be paid through these bill machines.

Agreement with Sui Northern Gas Pipelines (SNGPL) has also been signed and their consumers will also be paying their bills in the near future.

Nadra is also negotiating with other utility companies to bring them on board. Besides utility bills people can also get pin codes of scratch cards of cellular phone companies through this machine.

For the use of these bill machines, Nadra has again reminded people to get themselves enrolled. The enrolment facility is available at NSRCs.

More than 200,000 potential customers have got themselves enrolled. For enrolment people are required to bring along their utility bills (telephone, gas, electricity) along with their computerized national identity cards (CNIC).

Consumer numbers of the utility bills will be mapped with the CNICs. The consumer can also nominate other persons i.e. other family members and servants who can pay the utility bill on their behalf by providing their CNIC number.

Nadra has developed this bill payment system keeping in view the difficulties of the public. It is for the first time in Pakistan that arrangements have been made to pay utility bills in cash.

It is envisaged that this system will relieve pressure on banks and instead of standing in long queues, the public would be able to pay their bills through these ATM-like bill machines.