NADRA assures to expedite provision of POCs to overseas Pakistanis

• NADRA assures the special committee of the upper house to expedite the provision of POC to overseas Pakistanis.
• NADRA director international immigration told the committee that POCs are not discontinued and being issued regularly.

ISLAMABAD: National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) Tuesday assured the special committee of the upper house to expedite the provision of Pakistan Origin Card (POC) to overseas Pakistanis.

NADRA director international immigration told the committee that POCs are not discontinued and being issued regularly, however, case of those people who showed themselves as Afghan nationals and are now reclaiming the Pakistani citizenship have to go through more scrutiny.

The committee was told that those cases who are related to Afghan nationals have to be routed through ministry of interior and they are issued the POCs after interior ministry's clearance.

The director said, in order to facilitate the expatriate Pakistanis regarding registration or issuance of their identity cards at their doorstep, NADRA has launched an online application.

He said the system is being run at its full capacity and large number of Pakistanis are being facilitated through this system.

He said the POC application with complete documents and other particulars get processed in due course of time and the delivery of the cards is carried out by DHL, a private courier, at the doorstop of the applicant.

The director further briefed the committee that in rare cases the delay occurred in processing due to insufficient documents or because of discrepancies in applicants data.

In some cases, verification is required which takes longer time than usual because such cases are sent to the ministry of interior for further verification and clearance, he maintained.

He told the committee that since august 2015, 58,025 Pakistanis applied for POCs out of which 54,914 cards were processed and dispatched.

He said 2,074 applications were rejected due to wrong applications and the fee was refunded to the applicants and 1,037 cases were deferred due to missing documents or some additional information was required to process their cases.

He said the applicants were informed through phone calls and emails to provide more information.

The committee appreciated the briefing and directed the secretariat to send the reply to the office of the Senate chairman.