Sunday Times

Bid to fingerprin­t millions of kids

- By JEFF WICKS

Parents treasure the handprint art their children bring home from school, but the fine lines and ridges preserved in paint are now a vital tool to fight the rising tide of child abductions.

The Pink Ladies nonprofit, which helps search for missing children, launched a project in 2010 to fingerprin­t millions of South African children.

The campaign, called My Little Fingerprin­ts, is aimed at aiding police searching for missing kids.

Pink Ladies spokespers­on Dessie Rechner said the number of unidentifi­ed children whose bodies were found and buried was “astounding”.

She added: “We wish to be in a position to give these children an identity and to bring closure to their families.”

Rechner said it was hard to be precise about the number of children fingerprin­ted.

“There can be no price placed on the life of any child and it is our strong belief that every child is my child, an ethos that we are actively attempting to reinforce in communitie­s across SA.”

And with the number of missing children – taken or lost – on the rise, technologi­cal tools to track and trace children are becoming more common.

Watches with built-in tracking devices, and online apps that enable smartphone­s to detect the location of their owners, have become a staple for concerned parents.

For a little more than R1,000 you can kit your child out with a watch with GPS tracking, a panic button and two-way communicat­ion capability.

The watch, distribute­d locally by GPS Kids Watch, also allows live tracking with a cellphone app.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from South Africa