ISLAMABAD - Nadra Chairman Usman Mobin Friday made a stunning revelation before the Senate Interior Committee that many Pakistanis intentionally got themselves registered as Afghan refugees to get assistance package from the UN Refugee Agency.

In his briefing to the Senate Standing Committee on Interior, the chief of the National Database and Registration Authority testified that these Pakistanis got the refugee status to get the assistance package of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) meant for the Afghan refugee families returning to their home country under the organisation’s voluntary return programme.

“Even they got themselves repatriated to Afghanistan to get $400 assistance for each family member,” Mobin said. He said that even newborn baby of any refugee family gets the assistance that has been increasing over time and now stands at $400 per person.

The Nadra chairman was responding to questions of the committee, held in the chair of Senator Rehman Malik, on the issue of national registration authority’s refusal to issue computerised national identity cards (CNICs) to Pashtuns living in Balochistan for the past many decades. PML-N Senator Yaqoob Khan Nasar who hails from the poverty-hit province had raised the matter on a point of public importance in the Senate.

“There were 2.4 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan at one time,” Mobin said adding that 1.5 million unregistered Afghan refugees are also living in the country.

Another major issue of concern is that many of the Afghan nationals got fake Pakistani national identity cards after getting them inserted in the family trees of Pakistanis, in connivance with the government officials. Now even those true Pakistanis are suspect cases whose family trees were used to issue these fake CNICs, he said. He further said that some Pakistani nationals voluntarily allowed them to become part of their family trees.

Nadra chief went on to say that there were “five sources of doubts” to mark a CNIC as a suspect case and the authority through a national verification drive had pointed out 156,000 such cases.

The official website of UNHCR says: “Pakistan hosts more than 1.4 million registered Afghans who have been forced to flee their homes.”

Mobin explained that a parliamentary committee during the last PML-N government had devised a mechanism to verify the documents of those people whose identities as Pakistanis are doubtful. In the light of the recommendations of that committee, the government issued a notification that deputy commissioner of every district would head the verification committee to decide these suspect cases. He said that parliamentary committee had decided that every applicant in question would have to produce one of seven prescribed documents before district committee to give proof of his Pakistan nationality.

Senator Rehman Malik said that Abdol Malek Rigi, the former head of an Iran based terrorist group and his family had even succeeded to get Pakistani CNICs through entry into the Pakistani family trees. He said that the document requirement to give proof of nationality should be reviewed to make the verification procedure easy.

He said that laws could be amended to ease the process of registration and to facilitate the people, especially those who are illiterate. “Nadra should have clarity about the Afghan refugees and Pakistanis,” he said.

Earlier, Senator Yaqoob Nasar gave a historical perspective saying that some Pashtun tribes had been living in Balochistan for decades but they used to move to Afghanistan during summer season. Then during former President General Ayub Khan era, they were asked to either adopt nationality of Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Nasar said that Nadra had denied citizenship to even those Pashtuns who opted to permanently reside in Pakistan. “Even people having white bear don’t have Pakistani nationality,” he said, adding that life without any nationality document becomes miserable.

The meeting also through a unanimous resolution condemned and rejected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s “irresponsible and anti-Pakistan” statement which he made through Twitter a few days ago.

The resolution said that his statement was “factually baseless and a gross interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan.” The committee called upon the government to register a serious protest with Afghanistan and demand from President Ghani to “withdraw his statement immediately and tender an apology.”

The chair informed the meeting that a notice of the issue of hundreds of Pakistani pilgrims, returning from Iran and Iraq, stranded at Pak-Iran border of Taftan due to lack of security have been taken.

“I have been informed that around 1200 pilgrims were stranded for the last two weeks in Balochistan due to lack of security needed to escort their buses to Quetta,” said Senator Malik. He said that IG FC Balochistan South Region Major General Saeed Ahmed Nagra and FIA director have assured him of full facilitation to the stranded pilgrims.

The chair directed that the federal and provincial authorities to make immediate arrangements for rescue of pilgrims and submit a detailed report on it. He said that no structural monitoring or standing operating procedure was being followed to facilitate these pilgrims.

The meeting directed that religious affairs ministry in collaboration with the Balochistan government and other relevant authorities must formulate and finalise a plan to facilitate these pilgrims on the model Haj pilgrims.