The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has registered and issued Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs) to 40.4 million women.
According to NADRA officials, less than 50 percent women had been registered four years ago but now over 86 percent women had registered themselves due to measures adopted to facilitate them.
A senior NADRA official said the authority had been reaching out to NGOs to help facilitate women in the process of obtaining CNICs and achieved a 100 percent increase in women’s registration as a result.
He said NADRA was also working closely with other government departments to encourage female registration and had designated Friday as a women’s-only registration day in all NADRA centres. He said since 2002, over 92.9 million Pakistanis had been issued CNICs, covering 96 percent of the adult population.
He said that registration of men had increased from 33.3 million in 2008 to 52.5 million in 2012, while the registration of women had jumped from 20.8 million in 2008 to 40.4 million in 2012, with an overall increase of 72 percent in four years.
He said there were 486 national registration centres and 334 mobile units countrywide. NADRA infrastructure had increased by 83 percent with the addition of static offices, mobile registration vans and semi mobile registration units, he added. In addition, he said NADRA’s current database included 464 million fingerprints and 109 million facial images.
The official said 29.0 million free CNICs had been issued to citizens during the last four years.
NADRA Chairman Tariq Malik had also written letters to all political parties asking for their assistance to help NADRA access unregistered pockets of the population.
The authority had also assisted the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in the preparation of preliminary and final electoral rolls by verifying over 80 million CNICs, digitising over 17.1 million forms, printing 15.1 million pages during various stages of voter lists and augmenting 3.6 million additional votes in the ECP data.
Citizens were also asked to verify their votes by text messaging their CNIC numbers to 8300. Over 10 million people had already verified their votes through this service.
