LAHORE, Dec 19: Around 600,000 computerized national identity cards are lying undelivered at various National Database and Registration Authority offices due to wrong addresses given by the applicants.

Punjab NADRA director-general Brig Tariq Moeen Nawaz stated this at a press conference at the Service Club here on Thursday.

He said five million of 11.5 million population of four districts of the defunct Lahore division — Lahore, Sheikhupura, Kasur and Okara — had applied for computerized cards. Of them, around 12 per cent (about 600,000) people had given wrong addresses which hindered their delivery to the applicants.

He said in the remaining part of the Punjab, around 88,000 cards were lying undelivered.

He advised the people not to write suffixes and prefixes like Mr, Mrs, Mst, Haji, Alhaj, Chaudhry, Raja and Mian as they were not available in the original record and could create problems in issuance of the cards.

He asked women to give their photographs as the cards without pictures were not acceptable for performing Haj and Umra.

Brig Tariq said NADRA planned sending mobile swift registration centres to the rural areas. Two vehicle had been obtained for the purpose in which equipment used to make a card would be fitted, he added.

He said nine new swift registration centres — one each at the Lahore Township, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Okara, Dipalpur, Narowal and Gujranwala, and two in Sialkot — would start functioning by mid-January.