‘Govt struggling to root out corruption from NADRA’

Nisar launches home-delivery system for passports

ISLAMABAD: The government is struggling to root out corruption from the citizens’ registration body, the country’s top security czar told the media on Tuesday.

“Fraud and corruption in the National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA) is intolerable,” said Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan at the NADRA headquarters. “NADRA is the antithesis of corruption, so they cannot go together.”

Addressing the launch ceremony of a system for delivering passports to citizens at home, Nisar said he was trying to eliminate mafias in NADRA and passport offices, adding that he had also launched a crackdown against the agent mafia. “I am still not satisfied with the actions taken against corruption prevalent at NADRA.”

He claimed that not only did the registration body provide foreigners with identity cards, it also recruited aliens. “Now I want to eradicate corruption at NADRA as swiftly as it has spread.”



He informed the media that he would soon launch an SMS service to assist the applicants trying to obtain an identity card or a passport.

Inaugurating the online Pakistan Origin Card and the online Family Registration Certificate by NADRA, he acknowledged cooperation of the TCS courier service and the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP). He said that more than 380 NBP branches would now collect passport fee.

The minister said an incentive-based structure would be introduced at passport offices.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2015.