ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Friday approved six months’ extension in revalidation of manual arms licences issued by the ministry.

The extension commencing from June 1 is aimed at facilitating all genuine arms licensees to get their manual licences validated from the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and would be last and final, the minister said while chairing a meeting here.

He said after expiry of extension date all manual licences would automatically stand cancelled.

The meeting was attended by the secretary interior, special secretary interior, director general of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), director general of Immigration & Passports, the chairman of Nadra and senior officials of the ministry. The meeting was informed that during arms revalidation campaign till December last year, over 180,000 arms licences were computerised and validated by the interior ministry. Over 8,000 licences were found bogus during the re-validation drive.

Chaudhry Nisar directed that FIRs should be registered against people holding fake licences and detailed inquiry be initiated with the FIA as focal agency.

The minister was informed that one of the reasons for non-validation of remaining licences was lack of awareness among licensees and their unfamiliarity with revalidation process through Nadra.

Taking note of media reports about various issues faced by the masses during previous arms revalidation campaign, Chaudhry Nisar directed the interior ministry and Nadra to launch proactive media campaign for creating awareness, on one hand, and to remove bureaucratic hurdles in revalidation process on the other. The minister also approved, in principle, the launch of e-passports — a new digital travelling document for Pakistani citizens having modern features. The e-passport project will be fully operational by year 2017.

The DG Immigration & Passports gave detailed briefing on various features of the e-passport. He said a microchip embedded in each e-passport with all biometric information would help authenticate the identity of a traveller.

Chaudhry Nisar observed that forgery and misuse of the Pakistani travelling document caused damage to national image and was a matter of serious concern. He said methods and sophistication through which human traffickers forged the travelling document needed to be pre-empted through issuance of document which could neither be forged nor copied. He said the introduction of e-passport would be the most important step in that direction.

“We will ensure elimination of menace of human trafficking from Pakistani soil with the introduction of e-passports in future,” he said.

The minister was informed that e-passport was amendable to accept additional information that might be required in future and could only be added by Pakistani immigration and passport authorities.

Published in Dawn, May 14th, 2016