Missing Person

The other day, a friend of mine told me, that his friend's cousin went missing. Just nearly 24 hours later, the family members had actually made a police report. They made a report to the police centre nearest to their house, and when asked where was the missing personnel last seen, the family members revealed somewhere else. Hearing this, the police centre mentioned to them that they have to report this missng personnel matter to the police centre over the area where she was last seen and not at this police centre.

I find this ridicously absurd. Never mind the trouble, but can anyone even imagine the frantic-ness and the worries the family had to face when someone dear to them went missing so suddenly? I didn't know what happen after that but i seriously hope she can be found.

I kept this thought, how can someone even went missing in Singapore? In such an island, it's not difficult to go missing, unless to a certain extent, they delibrately went missing or they met up with some mishap. But anyway, it's certainly not easy to find, if it is, Mas Selamat would have been found long ago.

Posters was up on the notice board of all MRT station. To a certain extent, it might helps, it might not even. I couldn't imagine the pain of losing someone so dearly to me out of the sudden for no reason. The set up of Crime Library (http://www.crime-library.org/) is intentionally to help source for such people and help as well. If anyone remember the case of 'Huang Na', it was a public involvement in fact, where she was eventually found.

Seriously, if someone went missing, and public involvement is there, i'm sure the chances of finding the person would be there. But there isn't much volunteers in Singapore to do that. Back in places like London, they have a special organisation just to search for missing people, but of course, it's a profession and they are paid to do so.

The chance of finding a missing person is only higher when the involvement and awareness goes higher. Here's one good story on how the involvement of public can helped solved a missing case but sadly, it's all ended up too late (http://www.asiaone.com/Digital/News/Story/A1Story20070523-8361.html ).

Let's hope these missing people will be found eventually, safe and sound. SPF did their part by having notices on their website specially for missing personnel. (http://www.spf.gov.sg/missingpersons/).