The number of missing persons in Zambia which is now being exposed via social media may be bigger than it is being thought to be. The Zambia police has revealed to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT that for a person to be classified as a missing person, they have to have been absent for at least seven (7) days.
Of late, following the abduction and eventual disappearance of a mobile money agent – Pamela Chisumpa, more reports and stories have been circulating on social media of people reported missing, the young and the old, boys and girls and male and female with no clear indication quantification of how deep and big this problem is.
However an investigation instituted by ZBT is indicating that there is no readily available and live statistics of how many people have been reported missing across the country as the police reforms to digitize and upgrade its reporting system has not been completed with most police stations still utilizing manual recording systems which are difficult for any management team to timely gather case statistics on a real time or timely manner.
An exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times, Zambia Police spokesperson Rae Hamoonga disclosed that it takes seven (7) days for a reported case of disappearance to qualify to be classified as a missing person. Missing person classification is a parameter used worldwide to be used as a basis to Institute serious investigations.
The Police spokesperson told ZBT that sometimes Police receive reports of someone missing and later these people re-surface, that he or she was with the relatives. “ in some case, we have had parents who are on separation, [one of the] other parent gets them from school and the other parent reports that the child is missing”, he said.
And when asked about the statistics of the total number of missing persons across the country in Zambia total, Hamoonga said that such needs to be compiled because it takes 7 days for a reported case to qualify as a missing person.
Social media has been rife with increasing reports of alleged abductions, the most recent being that of Pamela Chisumpa aged 22 who remains still missing with police indicating that investigations are still underway and the other one relating to Mike Banda aged 26 who was later found and detained for giving false information to a public officer.
The Zambia Police spokesperson told ZBT that they currently have two confirmed adduction cases, these cases are both under investigations. One case of an alleged abduction is yet to be concluded and the other one has turned out to be a fake abduction case of Mike Banda who is currently in the custody, he said.
