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Politics
DA LAUNCHES CAMPAING AGAINST CHILD ABDUCTION:
STATEMENT BY MIKE WATERS MP DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE SPOKESPERSON ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Release, immediate: Wednesday July 6, 2005

The Democratic Alliance is today launching a campaign which we hope will go some way towards eradicating the problem of child abduction in South Africa.
I am writing letters to the CEOs of cellphone companies, radio stations and retail chains with a request to meet with them to discuss our proposals on combating child abduction.
We read on an almost daily basis of children going missing. Just yesterday a Cape Town newspaper reported that 155 children went missing in the city since the start of 2005. To put a stop to the misery that so many families have had to face, it will be necessary to harness the energy of all South Africans to find abducted children before they can come to harm. Our campaign aims to introduce a range of measures to harness this energy.

The first few hours after a child goes missing are the most critical. It is during this period that we need to implement targeted intervention strategies.

The DA proposes that:
* A voluntary partnership between the police and broadcasters be set up, so that as soon as radio stations in the vicinity of a reported abduction receive an alert from the police, they will immediately broadcast all> available information about the child and the alleged abductor.
* A similar strategy be adopted using SMS messages. Cell phone users should be given the option of registering to receive information about missing children in the area they live in, including photos.
* In large shopping centres and retail stores, procedures should be put in place to immediately alert customers and staff to a child reported missing.
Despite the enormity of the problem of child abduction in South Africa, our country has very few of the measures in place that other countries have adopted to find missing children. Our proposals are largely based on measures that are currently in place in the USA, Canada and Britain.
I hope that this campaign will be the start of a concerted national effort to halt this scourge.