I RECENTLY visited the Safoora Goth outlet of the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and was utterly disappointed to see that the office was not only devoid of a professional working environment, but the staff behaviour was also poor and unprofessional. There was no proper car parking space and the waiting zone was heavily congested.

Instead of the ticketing service system, the numbers were called loudly by the staff. After a long testifying wait in the queue, when I reached on my turn for data entry, a staff member was found squabbling with a widow applicant who then stopped even listening to her despite repeated requests by the poor woman to get an answer to her query.

Amid all this, the power went off. The staff announced that the generator had stopped working. Within minutes, all those who had been waiting for hours were directed rather rudely to come the next day.

My father preferred to wait and that turned out to be a blessing. After more than half-an-hour, the generator got restarted. Subsequently, it took another half-an-hour to troubleshoot the network and reboot the system as the data was not retrievable. Finally, we were issued a receipt to collect the card after a week.

I was disappointed to witness that a technology-enabled public service office was operating without proper and reliable power backup; there was no UPS to keep the computers functional, and the generator lost its steam much earlier than it should.

Besides, the unprofessional attitude was annoying. The public was treated as if we were the servants of the so-called government servants. Staff-motivation seemed to be miserably low and the office in-charge was visibly indifferent to all the chaos right under his nose.

Would the self-proclaimed high-tech and efficient Nadra management pay serious attention to improving the environment, technical infrastructure and professionalism at its public outlets? Hardly anything is expected of Nadra except possibly a ‘clarification’ to this complaint!

Laiba Iqbal
Karachi

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2022