ISLAMABAD
National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has so far issued 5.83 million National Identity Cards for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP). The Authority has established Registration Centres at different locations aborad to facilitate expatriates as such Centres are set-up where a large number of Pakistanis reside.
An official at the Authority on Tuesday said in United Kingdom these Centres have been established at Birmingham, London, Manchester and Bradford while in United Arab Emirates, these are set-up at Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The Authority has established Centres at three main cities of Saudi Arabia including Jeddah, Riyadh and Madina Munawwarah. Moreover, the other cities are Milan (Italy), Doha (Qatar) and Pretoria (South Africa).
About the future planning to open such Centre abroad, the official said the places are Washington DC, New York and Houston (US), Toronto (Canada), Kuwait, Canbara (Australia) and Muscat (Oman).
He said the Authority has also introduced Mobile Registration Operations to extend the registration facility at the doorstep of Pakistanis abroad and to reach out various locations for collection of forms and capturing live interactive data. Mobile Registration Operation (MRO) has been implemented in UK wherein teams have been provided with necessary equipment for live data acquisition of the available applicants at the spot. Manual forms are also collected in Toronto (Canada), (Madrid) Spain, Saudi Arabia and UAE by the Mobile Registration Teams on weekends.
He said to facilitate the expatriates residing in those countries where NADRA Registration Centres are not functioning but a large number of Pakistanis community is residing, NADRA has employed local based assistants who are facilitating the Overseas Pakistanis in completion of forms and processing of NICOP/POC applications in a smooth manner.
The official said currently in various Pakistan's Missions abroad, where large numbers of Pakistanis are residing, Local Based NADRA Assistants are handling NICOP/POC applications on manual forms. He said in order to improve the form receiving and processing mechanism of manual forms processed from abroad, an online cum offline solution has been implemented which to a great extent has reduced the processing time of NICOP/POC application to 10 to 15 working days.