NADRA woes

Around two weeks ago, my son's family went to get a Family Registration Certificate (FRC). They had to stand in the queue outside the premises for more than five hours and with their six-month old child. It may be mentioned that sometime back, the FRC was accessible online but this practice has been discontinued and now the entire family is required to be present at the counter for verification before issuance of the FRC, as far as I am aware. However, they got the FRC in less than 15 minutes once they entered the office and reached the counter. In fact, only a few counters were open and most were closed. As such, the gate keepers had to send only up to 10 applicants when a counter was free.

Had all counters been operational, more applicants could have been accommodated and many people would have saved a lot of time. The NADRA management and the interior ministry are requested to ensure that all counters at their respective offices are always operating. The application process should also be digitized and we should go back to having small NADRA offices in every district rather than herding tens of millions of people into a few mega centres.

Khawaja Tajammul Hussain

Karachi