ISLAMABAD: Taking notice of gross violations of PEPRA rules over hiring of a rented building for Nadra office, Interior Minister Chauhdry Nisar Ali Khan on Friday suspended all officials including director general NADRA Tahir Akram who were part of process for hiring of the building in Islamabad after FIA submitted its enquiry report into the hiring of a rented building with shady contracts clauses and on exorbitant rent.
Chairing a meeting which was also attended by NADRA’S board members the Interior Minister also directed Nadra to refrain from hiring any rented building across Pakistan for its centers.
To facilitate citizens at Nadra centers, on the directions of the Interior Minister, Nadra has introduced penalty clause for discourteous and misbehavior of Nadra officials from October 31, 2016.
The Minister directed NADRA Management to digitize the complaint system against Nadra officials in a second phase.
Over the issue of E-passport the Interior Minister directed that first phase of E-Passport should be launched in May-June 2017.
During the first Phase official and diplomatic passports would be issued. He directed Director General Immigration and Passport to come-up with a comprehensive strategy for issuance of 10-year validity E-passport. He said that complete conversion to E-passport should be completed within two years in a phased manner.
Regarding online passport services the Interior Minister decided to formerly inaugurate the launch on next Monday.
The Interior Minister tasked NADRA to identify government lands for establishing permanent infrastructure of NADRA within one-month so to permanently block avenues of corruption in NADRA and to address issues of transparency.
He said in cases where land for establishment of Nadra center is not available than a decision for hiring a building in this regard should duly be approved by Nadra Board.
In relation to ongoing national security CNIC re-verification drive NADRA has so far verified 90.9 million CNICs while 60,675 aliens/intruders had been identified during the ongoing campaign.
So far 2473 aliens have voluntarily surrendered their Pakistani CNICs obtained through illegal means.
Out of 2473, 2392 were Afghans, 57 Bangladeshi, one Indian, one Indonesian and one Iraqi have returned their CNIC on voluntarily basis. According to details 98 persons helped NADRA in identifications of aliens in NADRAs database.
The Interior Minister also assigned NADRA’s management to under-take performance audit of all the rural and urban NADRA centers along with their human resource utility to ensure optimal utilization of available work force.
