{"id":26998,"date":"2014-01-23T08:25:20","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T08:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/?p=26998"},"modified":"2020-05-07T08:29:08","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T08:29:08","slug":"lesotho-72-000-register-for-birth-certificate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/lesotho-72-000-register-for-birth-certificate\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesotho: 72 000 register for birth certificate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Ntsebeng Motsoeli<\/p>\n

MASERU \u2014 About 72 000 people have reg\u00adistered for birth certificates while 41 000 ap\u00adplied for identity cards since the launch of the National Identity and Civil Registration (NICR) project in July last year.<\/p>\n

Home Affairs Minister Joang Molapo said the ministry\u2019s officers had registered more people than had been anticipated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am proud of the good work that our of\u00adficers are doing. We are registering more peo\u00adple in one day than we had planned. We had planned to take in 200 to 300 applications a day but there have been days at the Maseru Post Office when over 1 000 applications have been received in a single day,\u201d Molapo said.<\/p>\n

He said the same pace of production can be expected in the issuance of passports.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have constantly supplied passports to people who have acquired the birth cer\u00adtificates and identity cards. People get their passports within five days of submitting an application,\u201d Molapo said.<\/p>\n

He said the government spends about M60 million annually in subsidies to cover the cost of producing new passports with the new se\u00adcurity features. Molapo said he was unhappy to learn that people slept over at post offices for the regis\u00adtration services.<\/p>\n

Large numbers of people queue to get birth certificates and identity cards every day. Oth\u00aders go to such extremes as sleeping over at the centre.<\/p>\n

He said more people than expected came to apply for new birth certificates and identity cards which were introduced last July.<\/p>\n

One can only apply for a new electronic passport after first acquiring the birth certifi\u00adcate and ID card.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have spoken to some people to ask why they are sleeping at the facilities and they told me that they want to be the first to be served when the offices open in the morning,\u201d Molapo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel so sad when I drive past the Post Of\u00adfice in Maseru and see so many people wait\u00ading for the service. I wish there was a way to quicken the processes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said there was eagerness among the public that gather at the offices.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are also hopeful that unlike in the past now there is progress; they know they will eventually get the documents they have wanted for a long time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He however said that the service providers were overwhelmed by the numbers of people who came for registration.<\/p>\n

The NICR director, Tumelo Raboletsi, said there is hope that by end of financial year 2015\/2016 over 90 percent of Basotho will be in the national registry.<\/p>\n

Raboletsi said the current numbers are sur\u00adprisingly big for a project that was piloted for four months in four districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a big achievement. We are running a model which will help us make the projections of the numbers of people who would have reg\u00adistered in the coming years.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are going to be surprised,\u201d Rabo\u00adletsi said<\/p>\n

Read further: http:\/\/lestimes.com\/72-000-register-for-birth-certificate\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ntsebeng Motsoeli MASERU \u2014 About 72 000 people have reg\u00adistered for birth certificates while 41 000 ap\u00adplied for identity cards since the launch of the National Identity and Civil Registration (NICR) project in July last year. Home Affairs Minister Joang Molapo said the ministry\u2019s officers had registered more people than had been anticipated. \u201cI […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","region-lesotho","type-news-articles","item-year-397","item-theme-birth-registration","item-theme-id-documents-and-passports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26999,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26998\/revisions\/26999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citizenshiprightsafrica.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}