Robert Montague, minister of state with responsibility for local government, chaired an inaugural meeting of the committee that was convened at the ministry's office in St Andrew yesterday.

Tentatively called Ananda Alert, the initiative is to be formulated into a Jamaica Child Recovery Strategy and Response programme. The missing-child emergency response system would clone the Amber Alert model in the United States.

Monster

"This came out of a discussion we had at the local government, how we were going to tackle this monster that has beset this country," Montague said.

The highly publicised case of Ananda Dean, an 11-year-old St Andrew girl who disappeared in September after leaving school for home, is the catalyst for the formation of the programme.

The formulation of this national response programme, spearheaded by local government, will work in conjunction with a task force that was established by Prime Minister Bruce Golding last week to review the institutional arrange-ments to care and protect children.

The junior minister said, local government is best suited to head this programme as it has linkages with various agencies islandwide.

Under the new alert system, once a parent makes a missing-child report to the police, it is envisioned that the police will alert the abduction alert desk to the local authority.

The aim is to launch the programme in November, which is being commemorated as Local Government Month.

Police statistics show that some 63 children have been murdered since January.

Since January at least 737 children have been reported missing — 177 boys and 560 girls.

Of number of children reported missing more than 200 children have not been found.