Nadra claims FBI has no access to its record
ISLAMABAD, Oct 31: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has no access to the record of the National Database and Registration Authority, including fingerprints, about Pakistani citizens.
“We have not given it and will not give it,” Nadra Chairman Brig (retd) Saleem Ahmed Moeen said at a press briefing here on Wednesday.
Without naming any country or agency, he disclosed that access to the database containing record of machine-readable passports had been sought, but it was denied.
Answering a question, he said Nadra had received the forearm of a youth without thumb, who was killed in the recent bomb blast in Karachi, and identified him from his fingerprints in its record.
He dispelled an impression that Nadra was not answerable to parliament and said its restructuring was continuing on the directives of parliamentary committees.
Big (retd) Moeen said Nadra had 11,800 employees and 3,000 of them were surplus drawing full salary. He said that Nadra had an infrastructure which could process 100,000 applications a day for computerised national identity cards (CNICs), but it received only about 20,000 applications a day. Asked about the responsibility for the loss of resources, he said he himself was to blame.
He said 365 swift centres and 189 mobile registration vans were operating across the country while the previous registration department had only 119 district registration offices.
The Nadra chief announced the issuance of 60 millionth CNIC to Ms Guli Bai of Mirpur Khas in Sindh, and said: “This achievement is a testimony to NadraÂ’s commitment to the very cause of its formation i.e. the electronic database of the citizens and issuance of CNICs”.
He said that the Nadra database was one of the most populated database in the world and probably the only one which used high-tech dual (facial and finger) identification systems. “In order to maintain transparency and accuracy, Nadra has activated the Automated Finger Identification System (AFIS) to eliminate duplication and forgery of CNICs. This system can check one fingerprint against 16 million fingerprints on Nadra’s existing database in just one second.” He advised people not to use fake or forged documents for getting a CNIC as the high-tech system would detect them.
“The multi-biometric e-passport project is another feather in Nadra’s cap and its sole purpose is to enhance national security by curbing illegal immigration,” he said.
Big (retd) Moeen said that based on its performance in the field of high-tech ID documents, Nadra once again secured the honour of being one of the top 50 IT companies of the world for the third consecutive year.
He claimed that Nadra was the only self-reliant public sector organisation as it had not received any funding from the government since 2004 and was meeting its own expenses by undertaking projects locally and internationally.
“Based on the biometric identification and online verification technologies, Nadra has developed automated kiosks for various day-to-day transactions,” he added.He said that through approximately 4 million transactions Rs3.34 billion had so far been paid through these machines installed across the country during the last 10 months including verifications, utility bills and pin codes for mobile phones.
Source: Dawn
Date:11/1/2007
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