ISLAMABAD: In yet another step towards making operations in Pakistan digital, the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) on Wednesday launched a mobile application ‘Rahbar’ which would not only enable citizens across the country to find the nearest Nadra Service Centre but offer much more through a simple click.

Nadra Chairman Tariq Malik, while announcing the citizen-centric mobile application, said: “Citizen’s residing inside Pakistan were unable to know about the location of the Nadra centre that best suits their vicinity. With Rahbar, the citizens can now make a well-informed decision about visiting any Nadra centre, keeping in view the location, distance, number of applicants-in-waiting, and average processing time through their mobile phones.”

He said such initiatives were aimed at converting Nadra offices to citizen service centres rather than only registration centres, adding that the application will ensure that citizens are facilitated to the max.

Furthermore, he said: “From now onwards, Nadra’s service will be in the public eye. This is the true manifestation of digital Pakistan and e-governance.”

Through this application, the citizens would also be able to have an idea about the number of citizens queued up awaiting their turn, processing time and the location of all Nadra registration centres in real time. The application would display offices in a list as well as on a map. The map would also show the location of the nearby Mobile Registration Van along with the registration office, making it convenient for users to navigate towards any Nadra centre with ease.

The application comprises filters to sort the centres including female-only centres, 24/7 Nadra centres and regular and executive Nadra centres. The application has an auto-refresh feature that would operate after every three minutes to update data.

Moreover, it has its own search engine that enables users to search for all Nadra offices through city, name, or location. To facilitate every Pakistani, this application has specially been designed in both Urdu and English.

This navigational mobile application showcases Nadra’s technical capabilities and citizen-centric approach. The application can be downloaded from Google Play Store (Android) and Apple Store (iOS) which can easily be accessed from all over Pakistan.

It may be mentioned here that Nadra has always been involved in facilitating the citizens of Pakistan by offering a wide range of services.

However, with increase in the stack of services, the caseload of processing has also increased considerably.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2022