Latest news with #CivilRegistry
Libya Herald
04-06-2025
- General
- Libya Herald
Sixty-nine accused of 3,130 incidents of forgery in the Civil Registry
The Attorney General's Office reported last Monday (2 June) that the Public Prosecution has ordered the detention of 68 defendants in incidents related to family registrations in the civil registry. These 68 accused include public officials. The accusations came after monitoring 291 forged National ID Numbers that must be deleted. As a result, the Public Prosecution initiated a public lawsuit against those accused of committing 3,130 incidents of forgery in subscription, residence and transfer documents in the Civil Registry.
Express Tribune
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
A frozen era of backwardness and corruption
The writer is an industrial engineer and a volunteer social activist. He can be reached at naeemsadiq@ Listen to article Dear Honourable PM, Progress requires a detox from perpetual pessimism and learned helplessness. Unwillingness to change has pushed Pakistan into a frozen era of backwardness and corruption. On 14 April 2025, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Sindh Assembly disclosed massive financial irregularities of Rs667 million, in the audit of just one department — the Karachi Development Authority (KDA). It revealed that Rs667 million or 30% of KDA's total pension fund of Rs2.21 billion was fraudulently received by some 500 bogus pensioners. Taking the liberty of applying the same ratio (30% illicit pension syphoning per department), can we not safely conclude that approximately Rs300 billion of our total pension budget of Rs1 trillion is being fraudulently depleted by ghost pensioners every year. NADRA is indeed a wonderful organisation. But what good is it to the ordinary citizens if they still need to follow a century-old photocopy and affidavit driven bureaucratic processes for routine services like birth and death certificates. Some 60% of children do not obtain NADRA birth registration (CRC), till they reach the age of five. Likewise, the processes of obtaining death certificates (and CNIC cancellation) are so complex that they result in NADRA making only 20% death certificates of those who actually die each year. Imagine the downstream chaos caused by the misuse of uncancelled CNIC cards — not to mention the ghost pensioners stealing Rs300 billion from the state exchequer every year. Can we not learn how another developing country, not too far from our borders, creates its birth and death certificates? Uzbekistan does not require its citizens to visit any office or submit any photocopies. All medical institutions are linked with the Civil Registry (equivalent of NADRA) and authorised to handle birth registrations directly. Upon the birth of a child, the hospital issues a birth registration certificate featuring a QR code. This digital certificate serves the same legal purpose as the original (NADRA equivalent) birth certificate, called CRC in Pakistan. Likewise, every medical institution/graveyard automatically notifies the Civil Registry of each death. The Registry registers the death, automatically cancels the ID card and informs the pension department to cease pension payments. Within 3 days of the death, the medical institution provides the family with two copies of the death certificate, each featuring a QR code that confirms its official authenticity. All this is done without resorting to photocopies and runarounds of government offices. Pakistan's large-scale misappropriation of an equally gigantic pension budget reflects a refusal to reform our existing processes and their controls. Clearly the most inconvenient six-monthly bio-verification visits to banks or the meaningless grade 17 certificates have proven to be utterly ineffective. We must immediately institute the mechanism of automatic creation of death certificates and caseation of pension, as described in the above paragraph. Linkages need to be created for sharing live data between hospitals, graveyards, pension departments and NADRA. The mechanism of 'proof of life' ought to be switched from thumb impressions to 'facial recognition', a facility now widely available in most mobile phones. Mr Prime Minister, as someone whose sole interest is reform and improvement of processes for the ordinary citizens of Pakistan, may I urge upon you to kindly focus on eliminating all paperwork and digitising all service delivery processes. Your efforts at building highways to shrink distances are praiseworthy. But must we not first build digital highways to shrink the misery and corruption built into our archaic photocopy driven processes. Pakistan is in utter need of simplifying the lives of its ordinary citizens by eliminating ghost teachers, ghost schools, ghost employees and, above all, ghost pensioners. Pakistan must become a 'nation beyond bureaucrats'. It begs and beseeches a digital revolution.
Local Spain
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Local Spain
Does being unemployed hurt my chances of Spanish citizenship?
You can apply for Spanish citizenship if you've resided legally in Spain for 10 years or two years if you're from a Spanish or Portuguese-speaking Ibero-American country, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea or Portugal, or are of Sephardic Jewish origin. You can also apply after one year of residency if you are married to a Spaniard or if you were born in Spain. Anyone with Spanish blood ties, such as having one or both Spanish parents can also apply after only one year in the country. But what happens when you meet one of these requirements and you apply for Spanish citizenship, but you recently lost your job and are now unemployed. Will this affect your application? There are many different factors which affect your nationality application, from how long you've been in the country to your Spanish language abilities and your knowledge of Spanish culture and history as you'll have to pass two different exams, but is having a job one of them? The quick and easy answer is no, there are not any financial requirements to become a Spanish citizen. This means as part of your application you won't have to show an employment contract, employment history, registration as self-employed or pay slips showing how much you earn. You also don't have to show your tax returns, so there's no financial requirement for the application at all. The main reasons for having your Spanish citizenship application rejected are having a criminal record or not fulfilling residency requirements – ie you haven't legally lived in Spain for the correct number of years. You can also be denied for submitting the wrong documents, not responding in time when authorities ask you for more information or leaving Spain for too long. As you can see none of these reasons are not having a job, being unemployed for a certain amount of time or not having enough income. Being unemployed will not even affect your Spanish nationality once it's been granted either if you lose job. The main way that could lose your Spanish citizenship are if you move and live abroad and take up another nationality or use your old nationality for more than three years, unless within that three-year period you declare to the Civil Registry your will to keep Spanish nationality. Therefore, if you qualify, have all the right documents and proof to apply for Spanish citizenship and you want to, then there's no reason you shouldn't even if you're currently unemployed. The authorities will not look at this unfavourably.
Local Spain
28-02-2025
- General
- Local Spain
Can a foreigner change their name and surname in Spain?
There are many reasons why you might want to change your name while you're in Spain or even soon after you move here. Maybe your name is very difficult for Spanish people to pronounce and spell correctly and you just want to make it easier. Or maybe your name means something else in Spanish and you're not comfortable with using it anymore. So can you legally change it or not? The answer is in fact very simple and the law is very clear on this point. It states: "The name and surname of a foreigner are governed by their personal law." This means in Spain you cannot change your name or surname if you're a foreigner. You can only go back to your country of origin to do so and take the necessary legal steps there. The only way that you can change part of your name other than that is by becoming a Spanish citizen, therefore you won't be a foreigner anymore. You can do this after 10 years of residency in Spain if you're a citizen of most countries, or two years if you're a citizen of Ibero-American countries where Spanish or Portuguese is spoken (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela), as well as nationals of the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Andorra or Portugal. You can also do this after one year of living in the country if you were born here or you marry a Spanish national. Generally though when you get citizenship you will have to keep your first and last name, but you will be changing it slightly be adding a second last name. This will generally be your mother's maiden name, unless only one parent appears on your birth certificate, in which case your last name will be doubled. The rule is that the same name as on your foreign certification will be entered into the Spanish birth registration. The big caveat is that you may be able to change it if you regularly use different name and can prove it through documentation. For example, you may use your middle name as your first name, even though your first name is on your original birth certificate. If you're name also violates any other established rules, it must be replaced, in accordance with Spanish regulations, by you or your legal representative. What about spellings of names? The law states in regards to the spelling of surnames that they can be adapted to grammar and phonetics of the corresponding Spanish language. It's a simple declaration which you can do at the Civil Registry. Keep in mind though your surname must belong to a vernacular language, and you must be able to prove its exact spelling in this language first. There's one other point we should mention - if you're looking to change your surname in Spain after marriage or divorce, there is a way to do so which you can read about in the article linked below.
