Children and persons up to 25 could obtain free of charge passports and IDs, under a draft law which was approved by the Government this week. According to the draft law, such a provision will be included in the Law on Identification Documents within the national system of passports, in the Law on Children’s Rights, as well as in the Law on Youth. In case the Parliament passes the draft law, the Government should come up within three months with normative acts so as to comply with the provisions of the law. Statistics show that there are about 830 thousand persons aged under 16, including 33.5 thousand persons with IDs. At present there are necessary MDL 99.5 mln thousand for providing the remainder 796.5 thousand persons with IDs. Annually this age category is increasing by about 37 thousand newborns. Since the National System of Passports was implemented (March 1995) there have been issued almost 71 thousand IDs for 10-year olds, and over 1 mln IDs for the children aged 16. There were issued about 970 thousand passports for these categories of persons. At the moment, the right for free of charge IDs is granted to the disabled persons of I-III, regardless of age, to orphans, the pupils of boarding schools and those of vocational schools supported by the state, the children without parental support, or originating from families with 5 or more children. The passport is issued free of charge to the orphans and disabled persons who need treatment abroad or who will go to study abroad. There were issued over 70.3 thousand IDs with facilities and over 4.7 thousand passports, the expenses of the state amounting to MDL 10 mln.