Jamaicans still sluggish about Ananda alert
Published:Tuesday | October 26, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Nadisha Hunter, Gleaner Writer
MORE THAN a year after the Ananda Alert - Jamaica's response to a missing-child report - was introduced, Jamaicans remain slow in signing up to receive alerts on their phones.
A little more than 10,000 people have so far signed up, which is far from meeting the stakeholders' target of at least 100,000 people by now.
"I was hopeful that we would have at least a 100,000 persons registered by their cell numbers because some Jamaicans have as many as three phones, and somehow we are still not getting it," said Robert Montague, state minister with responsibility for local government, during an Ananda Alert stakeholders' meeting yesterday at the Local Government Department.
Quoting figures for the period June to August, Montague said more needed to be done as 132 of the 382 children who went missing remained unaccounted for, in addition to three deaths.
Montague called for key stakeholders to redouble their efforts in order to improve the effectiveness of the programme, which could save children's lives.
"Since the launch of the system, there has been a steady improvement in the recovery rate," he said. "We were operating somewhere around 10 to 15 per cent. We are now averaging 55 per cent. That is still woefully inadequate, and as we try to improve the system, a gap assessment was done, and it showed up a number of things."
Montague also disclosed that the system was lagging behind in reaching the stage envisioned, and that the necessary steps are not in place to recover children when they go missing.
Getting information out quickly
Key among these steps, he said, is the assignment of points of contact in communities which can communicate with the police as soon as a child goes missing.
Among the recommendations that the minister outlined were having information about the system circulated on Jamaica Urban Transit Company buses, as well as working closely with the ministries of education and youth, sports and culture to disseminate information about children when they go missing.
"The more we can get the information into the public domain, the more children we will be able to return," he said.
Montague added: "I have one criticism of the police with this system: Once a report is made, the police could, within three days, call back the contact number to check if the child returned home, and maybe these 132 persons that we have outstanding could have cut been down to about two."
The Ananda Alert programme, which was launched May last year, was named after 11-year-old Ananda Dean, who was abducted and murdered in September 2008.
Since the start of 2010, 1,300 children have been reported missing, with a whopping 328 still yet to return home.