Biometric registrations open for vehicles and guns in Pakistan

A biometric vehicle registration program in Pakistan’s Punjab state is being revived to fight crime related to automobile sales, The Express Tribune reports.

The manual system for registrations and transfers will go out of service on January 23. There is an exception to biometric registration available for “hardship cases,” including vehicle owners abroad.

The Punjab Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Control Department had shut down the biometric system last September in response to problems with vehicle transfers caused by the lack of computerized records for older vehicles. That caused a backlog of registrations and starved the department of expected fees, according to the report.

Resuming biometric registrations is expected to cut down forgery and sales of stolen vehicles. The biometric verification can be performed at any NADRA facility or excise department offices.

The region of Gilgit-Baltistan, meanwhile, which includes a portion of Kashmir, is introducing biometric registration for firearms, Dawn writes.

Smart firearms license cards will be issued under the agreement signed by the administrative region’s government and NADRA.

In addition to providing greater transparency and government monitoring of arms licenses in the region, the biometric system is expected to cut processing times for arms license applications to between one and two weeks.

Safe City facial recognition nets 3

Safe City Islamabad has arrested three people and issued 887 alerts using its facial recognition technology over an unspecified period of time, reports Daily Times.

The move to install 106 cameras with facial recognition in an attempt to reduce crime in the capital city was supported by Federal Interior Minister Rana Sana Ullah Khan.

While Islamabad’s Safe City project has been reported to possess facial recognition software as far back as 2016, the Daily Times reports the deployment is the first of its kind, possibly referring to newer or upgraded software.

Safe City Islamabad recently received biometric records for 4,000 wanted people from NADRA.

Article Topics

facial recognition  |  identity verification  |  NADRA  |  Pakistan  |  registration  |  vehicle registration