Dispute between NADRA and Cellular Companies Halts online Verification System for Franchisers

A dispute between NADRA and Cellular Companies is going to collapse online SIM verification system that was started just a week ago, reported Daily Jang. This online verification of NIC was granted to franchisers who could check the legitimacy of any National Identity Card in real time using NADRA’s central database system through fiber optic cable. In this regards franchisers were especially trained to use NADRA’s database.

Mr. Ibrar Mustafa of Daily Jang, in his report says that the dispute is primarily over the operating expenses of this system. We learned that earlier cellular companies and NADRA had agreed with Rs. 5 per NIC verification; however, now NADRA has hiked these prices by almost 700 percent; thus per verification may cost Rs. 35 to cellular companies.

Currently, cellular companies have stopped verifying NIC with NADRA’s database until the dispute is not resolved.

Seems we are in middle of nowhere! Let’s hope things go fine and there is some positive ending of this dispute. By the way, I have already questioned about NADRA’s capabilities of verifying 90 Million SIMs, in which I had come up with couple of suggestions through which we can achieve the target of 100 percent verified SIMs.