ISLAMABAD, July 3: Old National Identity Cards (NICs) will stand cancelled from Jan 1, 2004, NADRA Chairman Brig(retd) Saleem Ahmed Moeen announced on Thursday.

“The old NICs will not be a legal document from Jan 1, 2004. This date is final and will not be changed,” he told reporters at a press conference here.

He said so far over 30 million people had applied for Computerized National Identity Cards (CNIC) and 28 million cards had already been issued.

The chairman said that since the normal procedure for issuing CNIC took around one month, people must file their applications before Dec 1, 2003, to get their cards before the expiry of old cards.

In order to help the applicants, NADRA has set up 122 Swift Registration Centres throughout the country. These Swift Centres will process and deliver “error-free” CNICs to the applicants within the shortest possible time

A total of 200 such centres have been planned to be established by the end of the year.

The chairman stated that a comprehensive and proper delivery mechanism was being prepared for prompt delivery of cards at the centres being established in each district. There would be no more home delivery, he added.

He said NADRA had been able to announce a cut-off date for the old identity cards as there were no more backlog and the authority was issuing up to 20,000 cards daily. NADRA had the capacity to issue 100,000 cards a day, he added.

The chairman also stated that from now onward all NADRA Centres would issue computerized receipts for submitted forms, he added.

Moreover, he said, unless for the change of name or a permanent address, the Authority would not demand any other document at the time of forms’ submission.

However, a detailed investigation may be carried out in case the applicant had no other relative registered with NADRA.

Responding to a question, the chairman said that so far only 400,000 wrong forms had been received by the Authority. In most of the cases, it was the wrong age, stated by the applicant, he added.

The chairman also advised the people not to submit double forms, saying such forms would be blocked. So far some 300,000 such forms had been blocked, he added.—APP