LAHORE, Oct 16: The National Database and Registration Authority has prepared a software for banking sector for foolproof disbursement of pension and other transactions.
Nadra chairman Brig Saleem Moeen (retired) told newsmen here on Thursday that the ‘digital thumb printing’ software would allow banks and other financial institutions to provide foolproof business transactions even to their illiterate customers.
The technique would eliminate the need for signatures of customers and save the banks as well as their clients from losses through forged cheques, he said.
Likewise, the authority was also preparing a database for the Punjab for tracking snatched vehicles, especially on the motorway, as and when they would pass through a check post equipped with a computer linked to the database, he said. The Punjab government has sought the software for the police.
Asked if Nadra’s data could be leaked to some unauthorized person, the chairman said any staffer found involved in the malpractice would have to undergo a 14-year jail term under the law.
The authority has so far prepared computerized national identity cards of about 31 million people.
Mr Moeen claimed that there was not a single case in the backlog. However, around 1.1 million identity cards were lying undelivered across the country. Of them some 500,000 cards belonged to Lahore region.
The reasons he cited were problems in delivery of cards either due to change of address of the applicants or applying by them for twice or thrice, while some applications had been withheld on suspicion of being bogus. The authority had written at least 40,000 letters in suspect cases to seek extra information from applicants for verification, he said.
He said there was neither any harm nor advantage in getting double cards as both would be carrying same numbers, pictures, etc.
Mr Moeen said at least 400,000 cases of bogus applicants had been unearthed, most of them in the NWFP, Balochistan and the Karachi city.
Eight thousand FIRs against the authorities who had attested these forms had been got registered with various police stations, he said.