WE may have heard stories about the apathy at government departments, but what I faced recently has made the National Database Regulatory Authority (Nadra) the worst case of them all.

My ordeal began when I, along with my wife and daughter, visited Nadra’s Khidmat Markaz at Ferozepur Road in Lahore on May 15 for the renewal of my daughter’s CNIC. We were not entertained, and the staff there told us to come at 7am the next morning and wait outside the office building till 9am to see if we could be one of the lucky ones to be issued a token; only 30 tokens are issued every day on a supposedly first-come-first-served basis.

We were also told about the 24-hour Nadra Mega Centre at Egerton Road which we visited the next day. We were issued token number 4645 at 9.30pm. We waited for nearly seven hours — seven long, frustrating hours — but were not entertained till 4.30am.

It was then that we were told along with many other people that our previous tokens had been cancelled, and they issued us a new token (1185) at 4.31am. People were naturally frustrated, and protested against such a long delay.

They tried to talk to the duty officer whose behaviour was simply unprofessional and unacceptably rude. All he did was to ask everyone to shut up and wait. Not having much of a choice, the people obeyed the ‘order’ and kept waiting. On our part, we finally left after another 30 minutes at 5am without getting our daughter’s CNIC renewed. This was the only way we could think of having our protest registered even if we are aware that we would have to return to Nadra for having the CNIC renewed.

If a 24-hour Nadra centre cannot facilitate the citizens, what is the use of having such a facility? The top hierarchy should look into such a sorry state of affairs at Nadra on an urgent basis, and ask the staff to at least learn to behave professionally with people who visit the offices owing to some pressing need, and not for the sake of having fun.

Emmanuel Yousaf
Lahore

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2023