'Nagarik App' Downloaded More Than Three Lakh Within One Week:
The 'Nagarik App', which was unveiled on Friday under the slogan "Supporting Communication and Information Technology, Government Services Hand in Hand", has attracted a lot of users. The app, which was made public on Friday evening, was downloaded by 311,153 users on Wednesday afternoon. According to the National Information Technology Center, only 27 percent of Nagarik app downloads have been verified so far.
Even though the Nagarik app has been downloaded, many complaints have been received that it has not been verified, according to the center officials. According to Ramesh Prasad Pokharel, Information Officer at the Information Technology Center, many users have complained about the Nagarik authentication through the telephone. According to him, most of the complaints are related to Nepal Telecom and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
He informed that the verification could not be done as the SIM card he was using was not in his name. Similarly, many users have complained that their citizenship details are different. He said that many users complained that their names and surnames were different and that there was no gender match between men and women.
Even though more than 300,000 people downloaded the Nagarik App in a period of 6 days, 225,000 or 72 percent of users have not been able to verify it. Pokharel said that many users did not have SIM cards in their names and some of them could not be verified due to a mismatch of their citizenship details.
According to him, out of 85,000 verified users, 62,578 have verified their citizenship details till noon on Wednesday. Although the Nagarik app, which is being tested, shows user attraction, Pokharel says that there are difficulties in running the app due to various reasons.
Officials at the National Information Technology Center said that the details in the citizenship, passport, or voter identity card did not match the data in the Ministry of Home Affairs and could not be verified using a SIM card in another's name.
According to the Center, 31,676 users have so far verified their passports, 28,000 have registered their voter lists and 39,715 have verified their PAN numbers. Similarly, 19,109 have certified SLC, and 8,486 have certified higher education.
The Nagarik app has been brought into operation from Friday saying that all kinds of services provided by the government of Nepal will be digitized and services will be provided from an integrated platform. In the initial stage, the digital identity of the citizen has been established in the app using the details in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Election Commission, and Passport Department. The government plans to add national identity cards in the coming days.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has stated that it has started the process of developing an online system to correct the errors in the citizenship details after many app users complained. The ministry issued a notice on Tuesday evening stating that an online system has been launched to correct errors in the Nagarik App . It is said that work has been started to develop technology that can correct the error in citizenship itself.
