In pursuant to Section 19 (2) of the Lesotho Passports and Travel Documents Act of 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairs has issued a gazette in relation to new passport fees.
New fees are effective from November 29, 2019.
According to the Government Gazette No.69 published on November 29, application fees for a new passport or replacement of a passport shall be as follows; M130 for regular e-passport (32 pages), M300 for regular e-passport (64) pages while an official e-passport (32) pages will be M500 and a diplomatic e-passport (32) and (64) pages will M1, 000 and M1, 200 respectively.
The Gazette adds that a regular e-passport (32) pages for a minor will be M130, while refugee e-passport (32) pages will cost M130.
The Gazette states that a person who makes an urgent application for a passport shall pay an extra fee of M500, adding that a person who makes an application in terms of sub-regulation (1) shall make own arrangements for collection of a passport at a place to be determined by the director.
In addition, a person who makes an application for a replacement of a passport other than the one that has expired or fully endorsed shall pay penalty fee of M300 together with the payment of the application fee for each type of a passport applied for.
This repeals the Lesotho Passports and Travel Documents (Fees) Regulations of 2016.
Again, the Gazette shows that the Lesotho Citizenship (Amendment of Schedule)Regulations 2019 which repeals and substitutes the Lesotho Citizenship (Amendment of Schedule) Regulations 2017 with the following fees: application for citizenship will be M5,000 and registration will be M70,000 while it will cost M5,000 for a child of a person who has been granted citizenship.
It adds that for naturalisation, applicants will pay M70, 000 and M90, 000 for registration or naturalisation of married couples and this also came in to effect from November 29, 2019.
Meanwhile the ministry stopped issuance of passports in March 19 this year. It further extended time for return of traditional machine-readable passports, which begin with the number RA, RB, SA from March 31, 2019 to February 2020.
However, the ministry’s 2018 / 19 annual report has revealed that about 35,481 passports are gathering dust as applicants have not collected them while 3,780 passports were reported lost in the same year.
The e-passport was introduced in the country in 2013.
Source: LENA 04/12/2019