This sound will be heard when a child goes missing in Serbia: Urgent alert about disappearance of a minor

Urgent alert about disappearance of a minor

The system for finding missing children in Serbia, "Pronadji me" ("Find Me") - the Serbian version of Amber Alert, has been launched today.

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The official launch was attended by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Minister of Internal Affairs Bratislav Gasic.

In the event of a child's disappearance, in the first phase, the media will stop broadcasting once every 30 minutes, during the first eight hours.

Mobile operators will send their users a text about the missing child, while JP Putevi Srbije (Public Company Roads of Serbia), Belgrade's Nikola Tesla Airport, bus and train stations will publish information about the disappearance on their screens.

The police will be in charge of starting and stopping the system.

The person who fought the most to introduce this system in our country, Igor Juric, the director of the Center for Missing and Abused Children and the father of Tijana Juric, a teenager who was kidnapped and murdered, told Telegraf.rs that tomorrow, immediately after the system is put into operation, everyone in Serbia will receive a text message informing them that the Serbian Amber Alert has started working.

"Everyone will receive an SMS message. Broadcasts on media with national coverage will also be interrupted, there will be notices on LED screens on highways that the system has been lauched, at the Nikola Tesla Airport, and the same information will be displayed at the bus station in Belgrade," Juric told Telegraf.rs.

He explained that in the second phase, social networks will also be included, as well as long-term participants, such as shopping malls, gas stations... where notices about missing children will also be displayed.

How the system works

The system will work by all mobile operators sending a message to their users that a child is missing. The media will have the obligation to interrupt the program during the first 8 hours after the disappearance - and publish information about the missing child.

"Television and radio stations will interrupt their broadcasts every half hour and publish a formatted photo of the missing child, with special sound and speech. After 8 to 48 hours, it will be done every hour, and after 48 hours the media will no longer have that obligation, because it is considered that the public will have already been informed about that child missing," Juric explained for Telegraf.rs.

He said that the "Pronadji me" system will differ from similar ones around the world because work has been done to overcome the problems and shortcomings that other countries have faced.

"I think it will work really well. We adjusted it to our environment and what we see as problems when we talk about disappearances of our children," he said.

Alarm criteria

According to Juric, the system will not be activated by every reported disappearance, instead, as he previously told Telegraf.rs, certain conditions must be met.

"If the child is under 7, the system will start automatically. It will be started immediately if the child is under 18 and has some form of disability, or if it is reliably known that the child is in danger," he explained.

The Amber Alert system was designed in the US in 1996. It was named after nine-year-old girl Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in Texas that year. Unfortunately, she is one of many children who have experienced this fate, which is why many countries around the world have already adopted this warning system, in order to save children's lives.

(Telegraf.rs)