Children’s rights advocacy group Save the Children South Africa wants more to be done for the safety and protection of children.
The organisation says according to research, 23% of children who go missing are never found.
Social media has been abuzz recently with reports of attempted kidnappings and abductions.
MISSING CHILD ALERT – GAUTENG pic.twitter.com/Ye3DI4Fcmw
— EnoughIsEnough (@feelalotza) October 3, 2020
Police have dismissed much of it as fake news and say they’ve wasted time and resources following many hoax reports.
Project Manager at Save the Children SA Nyika Machenjedze says many children who are found after going missing have suffered trauma.
“Even those that are found, most are found with irreparable damages to their psycho-social life and some dead or harmed in many ways. You see how we went on alert levels for COVID; we need a country of alert levels in terms of protecting children against these kinds of things”, says Machenjedze.
Calls for more to be done to address child kidnappings
Meanwhile, Missing Children SA says it’s concerned about an apparent increase in children going missing or being kidnapped in the country.
Last month, a Johannesburg man was arrested for allegedly trying to kidnap a little girl from a restaurant in Florida.
The incident, which had gone viral, was captured on CCTV.
In another incident, an 11-year-old child who had been missing for a day at Ga-Marishane village in Jane-Furse in Limpopo was found dead.
It’s alleged that the girl was raped before she was killed.
National Coordinator for Missing Children SA Bianca van Aswegen says not much is being done to address the spate of kidnappings in the country:
