China gives GPS watches to kids to track them

Beijing: School children in China are being equipped with GPS fitted wrist watches to track their movements to check growing attacks on them, campus violence and students going missing.

The watches, work as mobile phones and the first batch of 20,000 such gadgets were distributed among the school children by the Beijing Red Cross Foundation, the Global Times reported. Recipients of these watches are primary and middle class students, and the distribution of new gadgets comes in the wake of increased attacks on toddlers with China reporting as many as 10 attacks on school children over the past one year, leading to deaths of 20 students and leading to injuries to 80 others. Over 200,000 school children are listed as missing in the country every year and the current figure for such children has touched an all time high of 600,000, the paper said. Though the GPS wrist watches have been given to children free of charge, Global Times said the parents would have to shell out 800 yuan (USD 120) as service charges over the next two years. The Red Cross said that more than 100,000 such GPS phones would be distributed this year alone and that the figure would go up by next year. The high number of missing children, the paper said could be attributed to the nation`s one child policy, which has triggered gangs kidnapping boys to sell them to people to fulfill their traditional needs for male heir. PTI