The COVID-19 restrictions currently in place around the country have led to the regrettable postponement of the upcoming Queensland Family of Missing Persons Day.
The Australian Federal Police and Queensland Police Service are working to reschedule the event, which was set to be hosted in Brisbane on Sunday 1 August.
Queensland families who have registered for the event will be personally notified of the postponement and provided with all updates about the rescheduled event.
The Queensland event was due to be the first of a series of Family of Missing Persons Days to be held across Australia over the next six months.
Planning is underway to ensure the events can be held at a time when COVID travel restrictions allow key personnel to attend.
Families across Australia who have a missing relative are encouraged to pre-register their interest now via the National Missing Persons Coordination Centre (NMPCC) website. Once an event has been scheduled in their State or Territory, they will be notified of the details.
The program will allow families with missing loved ones to provide police and scientists with DNA samples as part of an Australian-first forensic program aiming to identify our unknown and missing Australians.
The aim of the National DNA Program is to apply a suite of existing and new forensic techniques to hundreds of unidentified human remains to assist State and Territory police in resolving cases of long-term missing persons.
This information will be used by the National DNA Program to update national databases, which will allow the effective searching and matching of unidentified human remains and missing persons cases for the first time at a national level.
A recent audit of cases stored at police, mortuary and forensic facilities confirmed there are more than 500 sets of unidentified human remains across Australia. Many of these human remains were discovered decades ago, with some cases dating back more than 50 years.
The aim of the National DNA Program is to apply a suite of existing and new forensic techniques to hundreds of unidentified human remains in an effort to assist State and Territory police to resolve cases of long-term missing persons.
