Khawaja Zaheer Ahmed - PDMA

Provincial Governments, and the NADRA was expected to undertake
verifications of antecedents of the eligibility of affectees’ families to help avoid
duplication or fictitious payments. Despite observed hiccups in view of the
innovative use of national data-base, keeping the magnitude of the work and the
environment of general perceptions of mistrust of official machinery, despite
random complaints, the NADRA acquitted itself of its assigned task with
professional excellence, leaving minimum room for extraneous manipulations.
The Commission noted that the outstanding claims of 400,000 generated due to
phased notifications in the KP were primarily by that Government’s own policy on
eligibility criteria. During the Commission’s visit to the KP, it was confirmed that
300,000 cases had already been resolved. The NADRA had the capacity to
assist that government by advising or devising methodology to address cases of
marginal deviations with a more pro-active approach. It discharged its task
expeditiously and indeed efficiently; it used its in-house technical & professional
capacity to render a national public duty, free of cost and transparent
disbursements of ex-gratia payments. The designated Banks did not impose any
banking charges during disbursements in the first phase, is also commendable.
This was an impressive case of organizational flexibility realigned to use its
resources and facilities during national emergency, despite many individual
complaints, mostly due to inter-provincial variations in the specified criteria for
eligibility made stringent for the second tranche. Out of the cases brought before
the Commission during its field visits and sent to NADRA for verifications, on 27 th
April, 2011 reports in respect of 2,012 cases relating to Kot Addu were received:
The reports show that 876 complainants have since received Watan Cards, Out
of these 860 received Watan Cards after re-notification of concerned village by
the Punjab Government. Eligibility of another 558 complainants was confirmed
whereas 211 were found ineligible for various reasons. Cases of multiple
addresses and change of address were also reported; 101 presented CNICs
which had not been issued by the NADRA. The cases relating to KP, and brought
to the notice of the Commission during its field visit were still under process at
the time of finalizing this Report.
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