Pakistan announced that it has imposed strict measures to prevent the issuance of national identity cards and Pakistani passports to Afghans.

Pakistan's Information Minister Attaullah Tarar has said that passport applicants in the country will be processed in three stages.

Tarar told the Pakistani House of Representatives on Thursday, October 17, that scanners and advanced devices will be used to improve the process of verifying the identities of individuals and prevent the issuance of fake Pakistani passports and ID cards to Afghans.

The Pakistani Information Minister added that the citizens of this country who want to get a Pakistani passport and national identity card should go through three steps.

Approval by a government official, family registration certificate, and re-verification of documents are the three steps that must be done, according to Ataullah Tarar.

According to Pakistani media reports, the forgery of documents, especially national identity cards and Pakistani passports, by Afghan immigrants is a serious issue in Pakistan, which has received attention in the last year after the start of the forced deportation of Afghans.

On August 29, the Pakistani government announced that it had revoked more than 6,000 illegal identity cards of Afghan immigrants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

In December last year, Geo News quoted its sources as saying that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had decided to collect more than 58,000 suspicious ID cards and revoke fake Afghans' cards.