A prove-your-identity condition may leave 3 million people in Pakistan without coronavirus vaccines, including mainly unregistered refugees, jeopardizing the country’s fight against the pandemic.
Currently, only Pakistani nationals or immigrants who have either computerized national identification cards (CNIC) or official refugee status can receive the jabs.
The country of over 207 million people has so far vaccinated nearly 3 million people, a ratio well below that of neighboring India.
Over 1.5 million unregistered refugees living in Pakistan, particularly from neighboring Afghanistan, will miss out on the vaccination for not having identity documents.
Besides, thousands of CNIC have been blocked in recent years by the country’s registration authority, the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra), for different reasons.
There are around 2.8 million documented and undocumented Afghan refugees in Pakistan, making it the world’s second-largest refugee population after Syrians in Turkey.
Only around half of the refugees are registered, with the rest living undocumented, mostly in northeastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan provinces, which border the war-torn Afghanistan.
The southern Sindh province, of which the commercia hub Karachi is the capital, also hosts nearly 500,000 Afghan refugees.
UN suggest that more than 3.8 million refugees have been repatriated to Afghanistan since 2002. However, many have returned to Pakistan due to ongoing violence, unemployment, and lack of education and medical facilities.
Apart from Afghan refugees, the South Asian country, and mainly Karachi, has a sizable population of unregistered Bengali, Nepali, and Rohingya immigrants.
As per the current procedure, citizens before being vaccinated must register themselves by sending their CNIC numbers to a designated official portal.
When asked about any alternative ways to get vaccinated for unregistered refugees or citizens who do not have the CNIC, Faisal Sultan, the prime minister’s special assistant on health affairs, told Anadolu Agency that the refugees with “Proof of Registration (PoR)” cards issued by the Pakistani government were allowed to get vaccinated.
In the brief message, he did not respond to a query about an alternative way for unregistered refugees.
