Sania Nishtar visits NADRA office in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Social Protection and Poverty Alleviation Dr Sania Nishtar has visited NADRA Mega Center and expressed satisfaction over the arrangements made to facilitate the visitors and the services for Ehsaas Programme beneficiaries.

National Database and Registration Authority’s  (NADRA) Chairman Usman Mobin was also present on the occasion.

The special Assistant thanked the chairman for solving the issue of bio-metric verification of Ehsaas Programme beneficiaries by opening the NADRA centers.

Responding to a question, the SAPM said necessary steps had taken to avoid people’s clusters outside the NADRA offices and provide them proper COVID-19  preventive facilities like masks, hand washing, chairs for sitting with specific distance, disinfection.

She said the government was taking maximum steps to control the spread of COVID-19 in the country with the assistance of the provincial governments and other stakeholders.

Earlier, on April 30, the federal government had decided to reopen the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) offices nationwide from May 4 in order to facilitate Ehsaas beneficiaries.

According to the notification issued by the government, the NADRA centres would remain open from 10:00 am to 04:00 pm.

The notification had informed that the offices will perform bio-metric verification on the beneficiaries of the Ehsaas programme amid special arrangements made for the visitors to maintain social distancing.

“The verification process will be carried out using 600 NADRA centres and 200 mobile vans,” the notification added.

The government had directed the NADRA officials to implement preventive measures at the offices before resuming the activity including the provision of hand gloves and sanitizers to employees.