Governor inaugurates utility bill kiosk

* NADRA chairman promises 31 kiosks in Lahore by 2007

Staff Report

LAHORE: Governor Khalid Maqbool inaugurated National Database and Registration Authority’s (NADRA) utility bills collection kiosk on Sanda Road on Saturday.

The governor praised NADRA for developing the project to facilitate people and said the kiosk project would also help financial and commercial institutions and service sector organisations to improve their workflow and achieve greater customer satisfaction.

He said all available resources should be used to help the people and government departments should come up with innovative ideas to improve people’s lifestyles.

All government departments should follow NADRA’s example, the governor said, and must utilise local talent for Pakistan’s progress. “This will help stop the brain drain and will give everyone an opportunity to contribute to the country’s development,” he said. NADRA kiosks would help people pay their utility bills in a hassle-free and “respectable” way, he added.

The facilities designed by NADRA, including passports for Umrah, were based on computerised national identity cards (CNIC), he said, and people, especially women, must get registered and obtain their computerised CNICs as early as possible.

NADRA Chairman Brig (r) Saleem Ahmed Moeen said the number of kiosks in Lahore would increase to 31 by the end of this year and following the popularity of the kiosks in Lahore, three of them had been set up in Gujranwala and two in Sialkot.

He said the response to the machines was “extremely encouraging” and had motivated the NADRA team to expand its network. About 463 bills were deposited in Deebalpur in a day, he said.

NADRA had also set up counters at Swift Centres to facilitate payment of utility bills, he said, and there were 100 such counters in the province.

The kiosks had a graphical interface to enable even illiterate people to use the touch screen based system, he said, and accepted cash to facilitate the low-income group.

The kiosk machines were designed by the authority, he said, and had been manufactured in Pakistan by two local companies. Of the 240 kiosks installed in Pakistan in the first phase, 140 were made locally and 100 were bought from China, the chairman said.

He said NADRA wanted to eliminate the “VIP-culture” and help people, especially senior citizens and the physically challenged. The CNIC-based system helped join several facilities on a single platform, he said.

About 84 percent of Punjab’s population (based on the 1998 census) applied for CNICs, he said, and and 80 percent had already received the cards. “The remaining 20 percent will be registered within a year,” he added. Moeen said NADRA had a database of about 84 million citizens, of which 54 million were adults. NADRA had the capacity to produce 70,000 to 100,000 cards in a day, he said, and received 20,000 to 30,000 forms every day.

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