Botswana has slashed electronic passports fees for minors by more than 100%.

Letso Mpho, assistant communications manager at the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs said the application fee for passports issued to persons under the age of 16 years has been reduced from P260.00 to P100.00.

Mpho said the normal issuance for the e-passport continues to be within five working days, while express service cost P390 for passports issued within 48 hours, extra service cost P520.00 for passport issued within 24 hours.

Meanwhile, electronic Emergency Travel Documents (E-ETD) will cost P12.00 and P1000.00 is payable for replacement of a lost, stolen or damaged e-passport.

Botswana’s e-passport is the latest generation of machine readable travel documents (MRTDs) with chip based security features, which is in compliance with the standards of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

Botswana adopted e-passport after heightened global security concerns, which led the ICAO to set a 2015 deadline for governments to equip passports with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.

In 2003, ICAO adopted a global plan for the implementation of not just machine-readable passports but also for the use of biometric identifiers in all of its 188 member countries.

Apart from introducing e-passports Botswana has also computerised work and residence permits for all foreign nationals.