September 10, 2006	Sunday	Sha'aban 16, 1427

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LAHORE, Sept 9: Around 77 per cent eligible population of Punjab has been issued computerised national identity cards and the remaining will get the same before the forthcoming elections.

National Database and Registration Authority Punjab director-general Col Mohammad Iqbal (retired) told newsmen here on Saturday that Nadra had the capacity to issue CNICs for the remaining 23 per cent eligible population in a year.

“Though the Election Commission of Pakistan has not given us a deadline in this regard, we have sped up the process of issuing CNICs,” he said, adding this figure was based on the 1998 census.

He said that CNICs of around 500,000 people across Punjab had been prepared and they were lying at its delivery centers. They have not yet turned up to collect them, he said. He was of the opinion that voters having CNICs would be eligible to cast votes in the forthcoming elections.

“The old NIC will perhaps be used for updating voter lists,” he added.

Mr Iqbal said that some 3,000 cases had been registered against the people for getting CNICs on fake particulars and 1,200 booked for wrong attestation.

Answering a question, he said Nadra’s automated finger identification system helped law enforcement agencies trace culprits.

He said that the authority had engaged the union councils of the district governments for issuance of computerised birth, death, marriage and divorce certificates. Some 300 union councils had already been automated in Lahore region. He said the system had eliminated the element of corruption. He clarified that only Rs100 was the actual fee for getting issued a birth certificate.

The DG said the authority had set up kiosks in Lahore and eight other districts for payment of utility bills. The service was available round-the-clock.

Seeing the public response, he said that the number of such machines had been increased to 19 in Lahore, three in Gujranwala and two in Sialkot. Seventeen more would be installed in Okara, Sheikhupura and Lahore soon.

He said that mobile vans were facilitating the people especially women of the far-flung areas. In some of its centers, special days have been fixed for women to facilitate them, he said.

He said Nadra’s Lahore region had the capacity to process over 10,000 applications in a day. But, at present, he said around 6,000 applications were being processed in a day. He said the authority was operating 111 static data acquisition units and 39 mobile vans with a combined form-processing capacity of 50,000 per day but only 20,000 forms were being received daily.