The National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA) has registered over 39.104 million women, which constitutes 80 percent of the adult women population across the country, with the help of women-only registration centres, dedicated mobile vans and reserving Friday for the registration of only women, said NADRA Deputy Chairman Tariq Malik in a statement.
He said that NADRA has been working aggressively to increase female registration across the country, particularly in the far-flung areas, through its women mobile registration vans, which provide services at their doorstep.
He added that NADRA centres across the country have been reserved for only women on Fridays, whereas in addition to 400 other Data Acquisition Units, 11 women-only NADRA centres with female-only staff have also been facilitating women in acquiring Computerised National Identity Cards (CNICs).
He also said, “We need to reach out to more women and that is why we are approaching non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to help facilitate women in obtaining CNICs. To achieve this purpose, NADRA has initiated collaboration with NGOs, including UN Women and Aurat Foundation, and active participation of NGOs will help NADRA achieve 100 percent registration of women.”
He further said that NADRA has registered 39.104 million women across the country, including 5.166 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 560,652 in FATA, 21.683 million in Punjab, 8.511 million in Sindh, 1.423 million in Balochistan, 384,513 in Islamabad, 266,220 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1.107 million in Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK).
Emphasising the role of NGOs for public awareness, he said that UN Women would support NADRA by providing technical advice about gender equality and empowerment of women, exploring new opportunities to complement ongoing institutional efforts and determine other areas or services where cooperation and support might be mutually beneficial.
UN Women would help NADRA in different districts including Pishin, Qilla Saifullah, Lasbela, Zhob and Gwadar, he added.
Malik said that Aurat Foundation would help NADRA in running public awareness programmes, especially in far-flung areas to encourage women who did not register themselves in the national database.
He also said that Aurat Foundation would mobilise resources to achieve the objective in close coordination with NADRA.
He further said that in the past five years, NADRA has increased women’s registration by 116 percent, whereas the authority has already registered 96 percent of the adult population of the country by issuing 90.06 million CNICs including 39.1 million to women.
“So far, we have registered 80 percent of the adult women, which is a tremendous boost in female registration as compared to 45 percent in 2007-8,” he added.
Negating misleading impression of women’s vote registration, he said that over 1.14 million women have been registered this year alone, ensuring their right to vote as CNIC has been made mandatory to register.
He also highlighted that 35.931 women voters have been registered, including 5.060 million in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 518,509 in FATA, 20.650 million in Punjab, 8.066 million in Sindh, 1.379 million in Balochistan and 255,669 in the federal area, whereas women voters of Gilgit-Baltistan, AJK, etc would be included in the final electoral rolls.
