Interior Minister A. Rehman Malik on Friday said during a session of the National Assembly that a total of 88,152 duplicate passports have been issued by 93 out of 110 Pakistani missions working abroad during the last five years.
In a written reply to a question posed by Himayatullah Mayar, he said two passports, one each from PAREP Hanoi and Dushanbe were stolen/misplaced during the processing procedure in the office and the matter was reported to the local police.
Regarding the criteria of issuing duplicate passports, he said the applicant had to produce a police report regarding the loss of the passport. The confirmation of the lost passport had to be obtained from the original passport issuing authority before a duplicate passport could be issued.
In a written reply to another question posed by Shagufta Saeed, he said that 324 car lifters were apprehended by the Anti Car Lifting Cell Islamabad from Jan 1, 2009 to Dec 31, 2012. Out of these 232 accused were challenged, whereas 92 accused were released.
While dividing the statistics on a yearly basis, he said that in the year 2009, 121 car lifters were arrested, 85 were given traffic tickets and 36 were released. In 2010, 98 car lifting accused were arrested, 66 were given traffic tickets and 32 were released. Meanwhile, in the year 2011, 105 car thieves were arrested, 81 were given traffic tickets and 24 were released due to various reasons.
He said no fresh recruitment in any rank was being made in the Islamabad Capital Territory Police due to the ban imposed by the government on additional hiring.
In a written reply to another question he said 80.792 million (89,791,810) Computerized National Identity Cards (CNICs) had been issued by the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) till Aug 9, 2012. According to him, as many as 251771 applications of new CNIC were still pending before NADRA. The delay was due to incomplete information provided by the applicants.
