PESHAWAR, March 20: The NWFP Minister for Information and Education, Syed Imtiaz Hussain Gilani, has stressed the need for strengthening the storage of Central National Database so that it could be equally utilized by all departments and organizations for planning new schemes.

During his visit to the Nadra office here on Wednesday, he said such data collection, storage and analyses, will avoid the duplication and help make a proper and long-term planning in different areas like governance, proper execution of the schemes and saving of national resources.

The minister was briefed in detail about the data collection, checking and distribution of national registration forms, preparation of national identity cards, their verification, storage and analyses by Nadra officials Brig Anwar Khan, Col Aqeel and Karamat Durrani.

He was informed that over 110 people had been booked and cases registered against them for giving false information in their ID cards, while action was also being taken against those involved in wrong verification.

They informed the minister that over 2.3 million Afghan refugees had been registered with Nadra and proper steps were being taken to stop anyone of them from getting Pakistani identity card.

Nadra had established 21 registration offices, including in three new districts of Shangla, Upper Dir and Hangu. He said in Peshawar the concerned personnel were processing 1,768,000 forms a day. The ID cards, he said, were printed in Islamabad and the data transferred there through a modern and well protected computers network.

The ID cards are delivered to the holders either accepted or rejected and a helpline has been established. In Peshawar, 36 counters have been established while the number of centres in the province was 841.

He was informed that soon a service would be launched wherein on-the-spot arrangement of pictures, thumb impression and other details could be made through electronic machines.

The minister was informed that the data collected in 1998 was also properly kept and processed, however, it was not reliable enough to be used as it was not collected in a proper certified way and thus no identity card could be issued on the basis of that data.