My daughter was made to pay Rs1,500 for new chip-based NIC merely because our family data was not available with NADRA
KARACHI: My daughter went with my son to get a new FRC at the NADRA registration center situated on the first floor of the Awami Markaz in Karachi. On reaching the counter she was told that the person concerned has not come that day and that she should come the next day.
The next day she went again and to her surprise, the person concerned was not present but the person had told her to come the next day did entertain her. He should have done the same the previous day and not wasted a day of my daughter’s time.
She was informed that the database didn’t have her father’s and brother’s CNIC numbers and hence an FRC cannot be issued. She told the NADRA staff that all the information had indeed been entered from the Bay form. She asked for a solution to which she was told that she should make a new chip-based NIC which will have all the ID card numbers on it; after this the FRC would be issued. My daughter was made to pay Rs1,500 for this new card merely because our family data was not available with the NADRA database. Surprisingly, she was told to re-verify the application for her new chip-based ID card from a First Class government officer. To me this appeared a useless activity as she is already the owner of a CNIC which was earlier verified by a similar government official and accepted/issued by the Government of Pakistan.
Today, me and my wife (both in our seventies) collected the new chip-based NIC from the same office. We had applied for the FRC hoping that all the NIC information provided by us would be included and it would be easy to get an FRC. But again after depositing Rs1,000 and sitting for couple of hours, we were told by the NADRA staff to bring the CNIC numbers of our other family members so that they could be incorporated in the FRC. So the whole exercise of making a new chip-based NIC was in vain.
I told the staff that this was our fifth or sixth visit to the NADRA office and they should try and help us but they refused. My ailing daughter is going to have her kidneys replaced at SIUT and my son will be donating one of his. But SIUT needs proof that my son is my daughter’s real brother and hence they need an NADRA-issued FRC.
Will the NADRA authorities help us?
Dr Saleem Siddiqi
Published in The Express Tribune, September 23rd, 2013.
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