ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development (OP&HRD) on Thursday issued a clarification pertaining to the media reports that the requirement of National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP) has been revoked for all the Pakistanis living abroad.
The ministry’s spokesperson said that media reports had quoted recently that NICOP was not a requirement anymore for overseas Pakistanis, whereas the ministry had only issued directions of not demanding NICOP from emigrant workers for registration at its Protectorate of Emigrants Offices.
National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) Ordinance 2000 imposed the compulsory requirement of NICOP on the intending emigrants. Therefore, NICOP became a precondition for protector clearance as no intending emigrant could be registered without having NICOP, he said.
He said that the NICOP imposition was country specific and structure of fees varied from country to country.
The NICOP fee was outside the operative domain of emigration laws which had always remained a cause of concern for the emigrant community as whole because it leads to the substantial financial burden for them alongside the increased load of work on both the protector and the intending emigrant, he added.
Referring to a meeting between the secretaries of ministries of interior and OP&HRD, he said, it had been decided that Protector of Emigrants will not insist for the NICOP to protect clearance of the passports of intending emigrants.
The directions had been issued to all the offices of Protector of Emigrants that NICOP was not to be demanded at the time of registration. If an emigrant who intended work in another country produced a valid Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC), his/her registration would be done.
The spokesman said that the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment and Overseas Employment Corporation had already been directed to comply with the orders.
