PESHAWAR, Nov 20: The NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah on Tuesday assured full logistic support to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to help set up a state-of-the-art monitoring system at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at Torkham.

“I am not really concerned as to who operates the system, whether the political authorities or the FIA. We are ready to provide the infrastructure and the security that you require,” Iftikhar said, soon after inaugurating Personal Identification, Secure Comparison and Evaluation System (PISCES) at Peshawar International Airport.

Director General, FIA, Abid Asad, and Project Director, PISCES, Ammad Jafri, also spoke on the occasion and highlighted various aspects of the new system and the reasons behind its installation.

The governor recalled that hordes of Afghans headed toward Pakistan during the Afghan war, some of whom later acquired Pakistani passports. He said that it was one of the reasons why Pakistani passports lost their credibility and value.

“Pakistani passports were looked at with suspicion,” he said. “It is a humiliating experience when a Pakistani citizen holding a Pakistani passport is asked to stand on one side.”

He said that corruption in the government departments concerned was largely to be blamed for theft and forgery of Pakistani passports.

He said that PISCES was a project of national import and felt confident that it would have good impact on national security. He, however, emphasised the need for deployment of efficient and honest people to operate the new system.

The DG FIA in his welcome speech said the new system would help in better monitoring of entry and exit points at all the ports in Pakistan.

He disclosed that 28,000 Pakistani passports had been stolen over the past years. “This reflects the enormity of the problem we are facing,” he said.

Abid Asad said that the Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossing at Torkham was high on the priority list and hoped that a project of similar nature would be implemented there in the next two months.

He asked the NWFP government for legal and logistic support to implement the project at Torkham which, he added, would help combat illegal immigration, human smuggling, narcotics and maintenance of entry and exit record at ports.