The Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) is calling for the conscious use of information technologies in the dissemination of possible crimes from the point of view of false information.

"The use of technology is free for citizens, but freedom must be combined with awareness, which implies responsibility in its use," said the Director of the PRM's Public Relations Department and spokesperson for the Maputo Provincial Command, Juarce Martins. He stressed that "technologies have advantages and disadvantages".

The PRM says it is following "with some concern" on social media the disclosure of cases reported as disappearances of women and children.

Martins gave the example of a teenage girl from the Liberdade neighborhood (Matola) who went to school and then went somewhere with her friends. The girl didn't return to her parents' house because it was getting late and she feared reprisals for her behavior. She spent the night at a friend's house, but didn't tell her parents. She returned to her parents' house the following day.

"This case had been registered, but it's not an abduction. It's really the irresponsibility of the minor," he said, speaking on Rádio Moçambique's Café da Manhã program about the disappearance of women and children in the city and province of Maputo.

He also recalled the case of a disagreement between a couple in the Mussumbuluco neighborhood (Matola), in which after the brawl the man decided to take his six-year-old son as a form of "revenge".

"We can't take these two examples and try to generalize them to actual situations of child abduction or disappearance," he said.

He also referred to the information spread about a child who supposedly disappeared and was found dead, "but in less than three hours was said to be alive".

Despite these misperceptions of disappearances, the spokesperson recognizes that society is vigilant and needs to continue to be so, with a spirit of responsibility to share certain information.

"We will continue to use information technologies, but we need to improve our awareness, educate our society to know how to use social networks to good advantage," appealed the Director of PRM's Public Relations Department.

Juarce Martins said that in order to ascertain the veracity of the information shared on social networks, the intelligence services of the PRM and the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) are following up, and so far they have been unable to find any evidence of the phenomena reported.

"As police officers, we're not saying that the phenomena didn't occur, but it's problematic to assume that they did without evidence," he said.

Of the work carried out in the communities, the spokesman said that there had not yet been any reports of kidnappings or abductions, although there had been incidents of a criminal nature, such as drug sales and child prostitution.

However, the PRM continues to receive cases of children "who apparently no longer know how to get home", brought to the police station by people who find them abandoned on the street.

"We [receive] the children, we try to make arrangements and we have managed to hand the children over to their guardians," he said, noting that most cases of missing children don't reach the police. "The right thing would be for all cases to be reported to the police so that we can understand the phenomenon."

Referring to the general situation in Maputo province, the official said that in the first quarter of the year alone there were 520 criminal cases, compared to 554 in the same period last year, with 87% of the total recorded having been cleared up. The province recorded 20 traffic accidents this year, compared to 39 accidents in 2022; the number of serious injuries was also reduced from 41 in 2022 to 11 this year; there was also a reduction in deaths from 41 last year to 19 in the first quarter of 2023.