ISLAMABAD, 16 October (IRIN) - At least 1,000 Afghans participated in the first day of a massive 10-week registration drive that started on Sunday across Pakistan, officials said on Monday.

The campaign is aimed at providing millions of Afghan exiles in Pakistan with identity cards to allow them to stay in the country for the next three years.

"It [registration] is up and running. Generally, it's quite a slow start. However, we hope the pace will accelerate from next week after the holy fasting month of Ramazan," Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

The US $6 million registration exercise 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 living in the country. Most had arrived after December 1979, fleeing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is conducting the exercise using fingerprint biometrics and photos to record information through 90 fixed registration centres supported by mobile registration vehicles across the country.

The UN refugee agency and government authorities are monitoring the process.

Only Afghans who arrived in Pakistan after 1 December 1979 and who were included in the February-March 2005 census are eligible for registration, which will provide them with refugee identity cards valid for three years.

There was some confusion at registration centres in Islamabad, with some Afghans unable to find their names on NADRA lists, despite the fact that they had enrolled themselves during the 2005 census.

"I registered myself last year along with my eight-member family, but today the registration staff couldn't find my record on their computer list," taxi driver Sahib-ur-Rehman told IRIN on Monday. He has been living in Islamabad for the last 15 years.

Officials said the confusion was being addressed. "Mostly, it's not a missing record, but it is more about spelling a name differently in English to what people use themselves," said Samer Haddadin, a UNHCR official at the registration centre. "If the person registered in the census then the record will be there for sure."

But the inability to access a national registration database could slow the process. If an Afghan registered in some other district, like in Quetta or Peshawar, then his or her records would not be available in Islamabad.

"Every registration centre has access to data related to their district only, [so] we have records of some 64,000 Afghans from Islamabad/Rawalpindi," the UNHCR official said.

More than 4,000 Afghans have already been registered in a pilot exercise, which ran from 1 to 15 October in two districts of Chitral and Jhang in northern Pakistan.

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