Officials Criticised Over 162 Missing Schoolkids

Legislators criticised the government on Wednesday for failing to provide updates on its follow-up work on 162 schoolchildren who have gone missing in the past five years

During a Legco subcommittee discussion on the government's revised guidelines on how to handle absent students, officials were repeatedly asked about the cases.

The Deputy Secretary for Education, Woo Chun-sing, said his bureau has reopened investigations into the cases, which were earlier closed because the families could not be reached. He also said the bureau was introducing more stringent guidelines on dealing with serious absenteeism, including contacting the police.

But the children's rights subcommittee chairman Fernando Cheung said that's not enough: "They should at least explain to us a general profile of these 162 children.

"What we're mad about is that the Education Department Bureau official kept saying that they had to put every effort into following up on these 162 cases and therefore they had no time to compile statistics that would provide for a profile."

He said that if such a profile were available, they would know if the children were subject to risky conditions or if they are cross-border pupils who have returned to the mainland.