Political rigmarole: Khanpur residents cry out for NADRA facility

With tehsil status for area pending for a decade, locals have to travel four hours to nearest office in Haripur

HARIPUR: With the absence of any National Database Regulatory Authority (NADRA) offices nearby, residents of 100 Khanpur villages have to travel to Haripur for key documents from the authority.

According to Haripur Tehsil Council Member Raja Nazakat there is no NADRA office for around 400,000 residents of 108 villages of Khanpur from Jandial barrier on the Punjab side, to Pir Sohava and Chachian village on the Haripur side.

As a result, residents have to travel from far off hilly villages to the crowded NADRA office in Haripur early in the morning and join long queues for issuance or renewal of their CNICs and other legal documents.

Muslimabad Village Council Chairman Tamraiz Khan said that the elderly are the most affected, since the four hours of travel to and back from Haripur is physically and financially exacting.

He added that NADRA should already have established its branches in Khanpur areas to facilitate residents of the area. But despite repeated demands, the problem persists.

Abdul Hameed, another former councillor, said that people living in the suburbs of Islamabad and villages close to Lora area also face similar issues. He demanded that the government open an NADRA kiosk in Khanpur immediately.

During the government of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in 2007, then Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani had announced during a public ceremony that a mega development plan had been prepared for the tehsil, including upgradation of Khanpur, the largest town in Haripur district, as a tehsil.

Despite the fact that two governments have since changed hands and a third one almost in its final year, Durrani’s promise has yet to be fulfilled.

The sitting Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government, to maintain their popularity in the valley has, at the request of former PTI MNA Dr Raja Amir Zaman and some other local political leaders, announced to grant Khanpur the status of the tehsil.

But a notification formalising the move has yet to be issued for a formal administrative set up.

An official at the Haripur Deputy Commissioner Office said that notifications for upgrading Khanpur to a tehsil are expected to be issued ‘soon’ since all formalities for the move are complete.

He added that provision of NADRA services in the Tehsil Headquarters would be the concerned department’s priority.

When approached for comments, NADRA District In-Charge Muhammad Umar said that they were sending their mobile vans to different parts of Khanpur after local government officials filed an application.

To a question, he said that setting up new NADRA offices or kiosks was the prerogative of top NADRA officials in Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28^th, 2017.