300,000 Watan cards already issued to IDPs

Nadra's deputy chairman says 225,000 families have drawn Rs2.5 billion so far.

KARACHI: The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has issued 300,000 Watan cards to families who were affected in the floods, said NADRA deputy chairman Tariq Malik on Monday.

“So far, 225,000 families have drawn more than Rs2.5 billion. We are ensuring a transparent disbursal of the Rs20,000 promised to each family by the government,” he said.

Malik added that due to “strong checks” in the software created for the issuance of Watan cards, applicants who do not belong to a notified area are not being processed by the system, which checks the address of an applicant before processing an application further.

People are falsely accusing the NADRA staff of corruption and creating law and order situations at the centres, he said, adding that, “NADRA is working towards a zero-error policy to ensure that only the deserving are issued Watan cards, which will enable them to draw benefits announced by the government. The system does not allow for any human intervention which may lead to corruption.”

While NADRA is responsible for the verification of the flood survivors at its centres across the country, law and order at these centres is the responsibility of the local administration, he said, adding that the DCOs and other district officials are supposed to guide flood survivors to the relevant NADRA centres so as to avoid “an influx of irrelevant people”.

So far, NADRA has processed approximately 135,000 applications on an emergency basis for new and duplicate CNICs for flood survivors, according to Malik.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2010.