LANDI KOTAL, March 12: The residents of Sheen Qamar area in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency have demanded of the authorities to send mobile teams of Nadra to the locality to issue computerised national identity cards (CNICs) to them.

“Hundreds of people in Sheen Qamar area await issuance of CNICs as they find it difficult to travel to the Nadra centre established near Jamrud,” said a tribal elder.

He told Dawn that hundreds of applications for getting new identity cards were pending with Nadra staff at the centre. He said that most of the area people were poor and illiterate so they could not afford to travel to the centre nor could they fill the required forms.

The elder alleged that the staff at Nadra centre in Shahkas, Jamrud was also demanding money from the applicants for one reason or the other and were applying delaying tactics to fleece the poor tribal people.

“Our area is remote and it is always very difficult to take several rounds of the offices of political administration and Nadra near Jamrud,” said Haji Gul Madar, another tribal elder. He demanded of both the officials of political administration and Nadra to send mobile teams to their area to facilitate the residents of Sheen Qamar and Baz Garha to get new national identity cards.

The residents of the area said that Bara-based militant organisation Lashkar-i-Islam restricted the residents of both Sheen Qamar and Baz Garha to their areas since 2009 for supporting the military operation and raising a tribal lashkar against it. The Lashkar-i-Islam was also not allowing women of both the localities to go to even hospitals for any type of treatment, they said.—Correspondent