KINGSTON, Jamaica -The Parents’ Alliance Jamaica is urging governmental agencies to take action in strengthening the nation’s security systems to ensure the country’s children are protected. The call comes in the wake of the death of eight-year-old Danielle Rowe who was on Thursday abducted from her St Catherine school and was later found in Vineyard Town with her throat slashed. She succumbed to her injuries at hospital on Saturday.

According to the group, parents connected to the Alliance and its networks, are demanding that the relevant authorities, among other things, standardise and fund security protocols and systems across State-run schools. They are demanding that Government agencies provide State-owned transportation for students, provide mandatory CCTV coverage of the parameters around State-run schools, as well as to facilitate tracking and monitoring devices for students in special cases.

In a release on Monday, Parents’ Alliance president, George Goode, said he cannot understand how an eight-year-old child was able to leave her school premises in the company of who he described as “the lowest types of miscreants.”

“It is imperative that we understand the circumstances surrounding this incident to ensure the safety and security of all students and to prevent any possibility of this recurring,” said Goode, who is also the principal of a prominent primary school in St Catherine.

“Parents must be able to trust the systems that are in place to protect their children when they are under the supervision of the State,” he continued highlighting that “serious questions must be asked when these systems fail, and corrective steps become extremely necessary when the failure leads to callous trauma for a child, and the loss of her innocent life.”

READ: 8-y-o who was abducted, throat slashed has died

“Our members have a fervent desire to see a speedy and thorough investigation, and to ensure that the State better protects our families, particularly our children,” Goode said. “More must be done to protect Jamaica’s children, and to regain moral grounding and respect for vulnerable groups.”

Goode further lamented that, “if Jamaica as a nation cannot guarantee the safety of its children, then hope for a successful future is dead.”

According to the release, Parents’ Alliance’s chairman, Reverend Herro-Verne Blair, is already taking steps to discuss the group’s demands with the education and transportation ministries, political affiliates, organisers across the transportation sector, leaders of primary and infant schools, principal associations, Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison and representatives of the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA).