ISLAMABAD: Muhammad Tariq Malik, Chairman of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), stated on Friday that NADRA has embraced massive digital transformation through procedural and structural reforms over the last year.
During an interview with PTV, he stated that 43 initiatives were planned during the period to digitalize NADRA and improve service delivery, with 27 of them completed.
While informing about the reforms implemented in NADRA over the last year, Malik stated that some 100 new centers were established in remote areas of the country, in addition to improving the facilities in the existing ones, to provide people with hassle-free services and end the long queues that were a routine outside almost every NADRA office.
He also stated that the authority established a public engagement program and held open courts to resolve public grievances.
The chairman also stated that NADRA had simplified the registration process for women by allowing them to register themselves and their children with the national database without being accompanied by a male member of the family.
According to him, the authority accelerated the registration process, increasing the number of daily registrations from 70,000 to 125,000, with the majority of them being young people and women.
Malik stated that there are approximately one billion people worldwide who do not have any form of citizenship registration or documentation. He proposed that the country prioritize universal database coverage to cover all of its citizens under a unified national database.
Muhammad Tariq went on to say that by hiring more women, the authority reduced the gender gap among its employees from 4.3 to 1.9 percent and that there were over 100 NADRA centers with a female in charge.
“NADRA has made its employment procedure online to ensure transparency and merit,” Malik said. In addition, 63 applicants were disqualified for attempting to influence the recruitment process through political intervention.”
NADRA implemented an internal arrangement system to promote its 6,000 daily-wage workers by conducting skill tests biannually and organizing training programs to teach them digital skills, he added. According to Tariq Malik, NADRA verified the family data of approximately 50 million people so effectively that only 28,000 of them requested changes to their family trees.
“NADRA has also digitalized councilor services abroad to assist 75,000 overseas Pakistanis, who can now renew their identity cards online,” he said, adding that a similar service would be made available to locals. “I would like to request that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif launch the recently added option in the NADRA mobile app for online renewal of national identity card.”
He also stated that NADRA would expand the National Immunization Certification Programme to include yellow fever and polio immunizations.
Malik stated that NADRA had gained international attention and won bids for various database registration projects in various countries, including multilateral organizations and the United Nations. He emphasized that the authority subsidized the fees for the issuance of CNIC to citizens without using government funds.
He claimed that NADRA had fired 377 people for illegally accessing NADRA data, which was one of the world’s most secure databases. He stated that NADRA had a total of 21,000 employees. The chairman stated that 1.4 million Afghan refugees were registered with NADRA and urged those who were not to register as soon as possible.
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