PESHAWAR, 30 Nov 2006 (IRIN) - More than half a million Afghans living in Pakistan have been registered in a drive to provide them with official identification for a three-year period, UN officials said on Thursday.The US $6 million registration exercise started on 15 October, is a follow-up to a comprehensive Afghan census conducted in Pakistan in February and March 2005, which found more than 3 million Afghans were still living in the country.
"After an initial slow start, the pace [of registration] has picked up in recent weeks and a total of over 525,000 Afghans have so far registered themselves with Pakistani authorities," Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in Peshawar, capital of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
"Some 19,000 Afghans are being registered daily in over 60 locations countrywide and the daily registration numbers have been increasing steadily, especially in NWFP," Tan added.
The campaign is to continue until the end of the year.
A provincial breakdown of Afghan registration so far suggests that more than half of those registered come from NWFP, another 22 percent from Balochistan, 15 percent from Punjab, 10 percent from Sindh and 1.3 percent from Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
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