ISLAMABAD, Sept 27: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has approved restructuring of the National Database Registration Authority and establishment of its allied department, ‘Nadra Technologies’, as a highly professional multi-national company to export knowledge-based products worldwide and take part in international biddings.

Presiding over a meeting at the Prime Minister House, the prime minister said the strategic objective of Nadra was registration of maximum number of citizens.

Nadra has already established the Nadra Technologies to participate in international biddings for database registration technologies, machine readable passports and other computer-based products.

The Nadra Chairman, in his presentation, gave an overview of Nadra’s present capacity, on-going projects, future plans and strategies.

The meeting was also attended by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, Minister of State for Interior Zafar Iqbal Warriach, Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub Khan, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Dr M. Akram Sheikh and senior officials.

The authority is also shifting its database warehouse from the first floor to the ground floor of its headquarters building at the cost of Rs20 million.

“Database warehouse should provide a platform for all good governance programmes including inter-provincial integration,” the prime minister said while appreciating the efforts of Nadra in production of fully featured multi-biometrics e-passport system in the country.

“Although the main business of Nadra is related to issuance of NICs and machine readable passports, the strengths of its professionals can be used for commercial projects,” he said while urging Nadra to make partnerships with other companies and groups for export of technology-based products.

The prime minister was apprised that more than 82 million citizens had been registered in the Nadra database and 53.5 million of them had been given computerised national identity cards. The meeting was informed that Nadra was using fingerprints identification systems and face recognition system. Nadra has 226 multi-biometrics interactive data acquisition centres and 103 mobile interactive data acquisition vans.