As Pakistan grapples with inflation, its citizens encounter further obstacles from government institutions, exacerbating their hardships instead of providing much-needed relief.
In Islamabad, the issuance of birth and death certificates was suspended due to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) cutting off services to the Municipal Corporation Islamabad (MCI) due to an unresolved debt of 2 million rupees, a situation attributed to departmental inefficiencies.
For the past week, residents of Islamabad have been unable to obtain these crucial documents, resulting in widespread distress among the population.
A similar scenario unfolds in Mianwali, where residents have been compelled to visit the municipal committee office daily to register deaths, record births, and secure computerized marriage certificates. Here, too, services have been disrupted because NADRA suspended the municipal committee’s website ID over unpaid dues, causing the website to be down and halting all registration processes in the municipal committee’s record room for the past week. This has caused severe inconvenience, with citizens repeatedly visiting the municipal committee office only to find they cannot obtain the needed documents.
Adding to the bureaucratic inefficiencies, the Passport and Immigration Office is now facing challenges due to shortages in essential supplies. After previously dealing with a shortage of lamination paper, which already delayed passport printing, the office is now confronted with an ink shortage. This new issue threatens further to hinder the printing of normal and urgent passports, as reported by the media. Without immediate solutions to the shortages of ink and lamination paper, the ability to issue passports promptly remains in jeopardy.
