Moving Out Of The Alien Zone
According to law you’re an “alien” if you haven’t registered yourself in the National database of the country by applying for a National Identity Card. After getting your I.D. card you officially become a “citizen”. This self life experience tells more about the services at the normal government machinery and attitudes at work.
Image Source and Courtesy for Bilal Karim Mughal/File1
So I went to the Hayatabad, Peshawar NADRA branch where the registration and delivering of card was done on urgent basis. With me was my mother and sister. It is a five-floor building constructed on a small area.
The registration is done at the ground floor which has the space to accommodate merely 15-20 women in the female section and 25-30 men in the male section. I chose that specific branch because the environment and service there was not so hectic. Yes, you read it correct, “not-so-hectic”.
It is a pleasant surprise that there are still a handful of government institutions that are still offering their services quite efficiently. For example, National Food Security and Research, Anti-Narcotics Force and Pakistan Customs.
Anyhow, I took my token from counter no. 7 and went back inside. My token was around twenty turns away from the current token. So that meant we had to wait for an hour and a bit.
During the wait I noticed that I was surrounded by people of all types, shapes and sizes. This shows the miracle of urgency. For which even the laziest of our species move their lazy selves and come to the center.
There, in the waiting center, I noticed that there was a new side-office which was not there a year ago.
It was the In-charge Office. The In-charge officer himself though, did not seem like an officer at all, I mean in terms of seriousness and devotion. He looked like a college drop-off backbencher who was taken off of studies by his parents and casted upon this position just for the sake of filling this post.
The purpose of his designation was probably just to ghost around the center only to check if the staff is working properly which it obviously is, because there are cameras installed through-out the building.
His duty, actually, was to do the final investigation from the applicant and grant the final signature for approval. Investigation included questions about the applicant’s family-tree which may go as far as four previous generations. As the above-mentioned tasks were seriously difficult to be carried out by the computer-operating staff, the center needed a separate officer for this job.
Anyways, we were two tokens away from registering for the I.D. card. It was 12:45 pm on the clock, when the in-charge and staff started whispering about the Friday prayer break. Image by Freepik
All that I could eavesdrop on their whispering was that wrap up the last two tokens and then start the prayer break. But when the third-last token took too long, the staff left the center after dealing with the third-last customer. We were left sitting in the waiting in silence, in surprise.
The break was to be 1 hour and 15 minutes long. When there were 15 minutes left in the break, the staff started to return. Amongst the first ones to return was the in-charge officer, who was surprised that our matter was not dealt with yet. He asked me “is your work not done yet?”. I replied him with just a shake of head.
What I actually wanted to say to him was “Yes, obviously our work isn’t done yet, we are not waiting here to be served green tea”. He said “no issue, the staff is just about to arrive”.
Eventually, the operator returned and our turn came. We applied for the card and got the application form approved from the in-charge officer. After 2 and a half hours of wait, we got our work done.
I tried my best not to make eye-contact with my mother, because she was also too furious about the extra one-hour wait and she looked like she was looking to pour her anger over me.
This experience made me realize what it means to have patience. With that I also observed that there is still room for improvement in the staff of the center. For instance, the behaviour of the staff towards their citizens should improve and more professionalism is required. The public should feel like they are being served, not as if they are the servants.
Abdullah2