Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on the Law and Public Safety Cluster has pledged to recommend an increase in funding for the Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS), citing resource shortages that police management says are undermining the force’s ability to carry out its mandate.
The commitment follows a closed-door meeting with Ministry of Home Affairs and Police senior leadership this week, to discuss operational challenges facing the police.
Speaking to this publication on Wednesday, committee chairperson Mokoena Ramakatsa said police management had raised concerns about inadequate funding, which it said was affecting their ability to respond to crime and maintain law and order.
According to the Ramakatsa, the police said their budget was insufficient to meet operational demands, with some programmes receiving inadequate funding while others were left without allocations.
Ramakatsa noted that concerns raised during the meeting had strengthened the committee’s view that additional funding was necessary to improve policing operations.
The resource constraints reportedly affect the availability of vehicles, fuel, communication equipment and personnel, all of which are essential to effective policing, particularly in remote and mountainous parts of the country.
The shortages have implications for crime prevention, investigations, patrols and response times, including in cases requiring officers to travel long distances to reach communities.
“When the public report stock-theft, particularly in the hard to reach areas, the police are expected to respond promptly, but without vehicles or fuel or any other means of transport that might be impossible. By the time they arrive, the suspects are long gone with the animals. That is how lack of resources is directly killing the livelihoods of Basotho,” Ramakatsa pointed out.
“We are also witnesses that some officers are still wearing torn and faded uniforms that are years old. We can’t expect an officer to command respect and confidence in the community when his own uniform makes him feel ashamed. It affects them emotional, it breaks their morale,” he said.
The LMPS is responsible for crime prevention and detection, maintaining law and order, traffic management, stock-theft prevention and community policing across Lesotho’s 10 districts.
Ramakatsa said the committee would recommend that Parliament consider increasing funding for the police in the next budget cycle.
He added: “We cannot sit and watch the police fail because we did not support them. We will recommend to the House that the police budget be increased in the next cycle. Security is not a cost, it is an investment.”
The proposed recommendation follows growing concerns about the force’s staffing levels, with police management previously warning that years of limited recruitment have widened the gap between the number of officers available and the demands placed on them.
In August, Chief of Police Advocate Borotho Matsoso said preparations were under way to recruit 500 new officers, with training expected to begin in January 2027. The recruitment has been allocated M23.41 million, although Matsoso said the intake would not be sufficient to resolve the force’s longstanding staffing shortage on its own.
Police management has indicated that recruitment would need to continue annually to make a substantial difference to staffing levels.
The LMPS has also moved to retain officers who are due to retire, including some already on leave pending retirement, as it attempts to manage the shortage of personnel while new recruits are being brought in.
The committee is expected to scrutinise a detailed submission from the Ministry of Home Affairs setting out the LMPS’s funding requirements, including its needs for vehicles, equipment and recruitment.
The extent of any additional allocation will depend on the budget process and Parliament’s consideration of the committee’s recommendations.
For the 2026/27 financial year, the Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS) was allocated a recurrent budget of M560 million.
