KUALA LUMPUR, July 10 — The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) lauds the collaborative efforts of the Royal Malaysian Police and Women, Family and Community Development Ministry in creating the recently launched, Missing Children’s Portal.

The digital platform not only supports efforts to report and locate missing children by getting alerts out in a timely fashion, it also enables the public to engage with law enforcement personnel in providing relevant information that may assist in the search, it noted in a statement here today.

“In many cases, children sometimes take the initiative themselves to leave home in order to escape violence, neglect or in the hope of earning a living.

“The lack of birth documentation places unregistered children at an even higher degree of risk, exploitation and abuse,” said New York-based Unicef.

Hopefully, the portal, it said, and commitment of stakeholders namely the Malaysian government, law enforcement, parents and the public, could help protect children at home and in the streets.

“We hope that the number of children who go missing will be reduced and that the 338 children who are still missing can be found and brought to safety,” the statement said.

On Wednesday, PDRM launched a portal on its official website to allow the public to obtain and exchange real-time information on missing children with the police.

Of the total number of children aged below 18 years reported missing between 2011 and May 2015, 8,441 were eventually found but 338 are still missing.

Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Datuk Seri Noor Rashid Ibrahim, who launched the portal said the number of missing children was rather high and worrying. — Bernama