PAK National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has registered 39,104,379 women

Press /News Release

NADRA's all-out efforts help boost women registration, NADRA,

Islamabad, April 20, 2012: The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has registered 39,104,379 women which constitutes the 80% of adult women population across the country with the help of women only registration centers, dedicated mobile vans and reserving Friday for women only registration, Deputy Chairman NADRA, Tariq Malik stated this in a statement issued here today.

He said that NADRA has been working aggressively to increase female registration across the country particularly in far-flung and remote areas through its women mobile registration vans, which provide services at their doorsteps. Moreover, he added, NADRA centers throughout the country have been reserved for women only on Fridays, whereas in addition to 400 other DAUs,11 women-only NADRA centers with female only staff have also been facilitating women in acquiring CNICs.

He added that we need to reach out to more women and that is why we are reaching out to NGOs to help facilitate women in obtaining the CNICs and to achieve this purpose NADRA has initiated collaboration with NGOs, including UN Women, Aurat Foundation and active participation of NGOs will help NADRA achieve 100 per cent registration of womenfolk.

He said NADRA has registered total 39,104,379 women across the country, including 5,166,936 women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 560,652 in FATA, 21,683,220 in Punjab, 8,511728 in Sindh, 1,423,120 in Baluchistan, 384,513 in Islamabad, 266,220 in Giglit-Biltistan and 1,107,990 in Azad Kashmir.

While emphasizing the role of NGOs for public awareness he said UN Women will 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 may be mutually beneficial. UN Women will help NADRA in different districts including Pishin, QillaSaifullah, Lasbela, Zhob and Gawadar.

He further said Aurat Foundation will help NADRA in running public awareness programs specially in far flung areas to encourage women folks who did not register themselves in national database. Aurat Foundation will mobilize resources to achieve the objective in close coordination with NADRA.

He said in the past five years, NADRA has increased women registration by 116 percent while NADRA has already registered 96% percent of adult population of the country by issuing 90.06 million CNICs including 39.1 million to women. So far, we have registered 80% of adult women folks which is a tremendous boost in female registration as compared to 45% in 2007-8, he added.

While negating misleading impression of women's vote registration, he said over 1.14 million women have been registered in 2012 only ensuring their right to vote as computerized national identity card (CNIC) has been made mandatory to register in voters list and vote casting.

Deputy Chairman also highlight that total 35,931,663 female voters have been registered including 5,060,436 in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, 518,509 in FATA, 20,650,542 in Punjab, 8,066,866 in Sindh, 1,379,641 in Balochistan and 255,669 in Federal Area while female voters of GilgitBiltistan, AJK etc would be included in Final Electoral Rolls.