Parents call for Expo-wide paging system
- Source: Global Times
- [10:14 May 10 2010]
- Comments
By Zhang Cao
A mother stands with her child in a long queue outside the France Pavilion Sunday. Photo: AFP
Parents taking their children to the World Expo are calling for a unified paging system in the Expo Park so that it will be easier to find their children if they are separated in the throng of tourists.
Children have gotten separated from parents in the Expo Park every day since it opened, according to the Oriental Morning Post. Parents who lose their children can go to information centers where they can page the children.
However, the paging system in each zone is separated, meaning that if the child has wandered into a different area of the park, they won't hear the message.
The entire Expo Park is 5.28 square kilometers and is made up of five different zones. Each paging system has different music and information specific to that zone.
Besides the information centers scattered around the park, parents can also go to the lost-child service center located in Zone D that takes care of lost children under the age of 14 and helps find lost children's parents.
However, the lack of a unified paging system made finding a parent not so easy either. A five-year-old girl was found crying near the China Pavilion last Thursday.
A staffer surnamed Li in a service booth took her to the lost-child center and asked the name of her kindergarten, finally finding her mother's phone number through her teacher, according to the Oriental Morning Post.
The lack of an Expo-wide paging system is somewhat helped by a database of lost-child information, which is accessible at every information center.
"If we find kids looking for their parents, we will take them to the lost-child service center and put the child's information into a database. Parents can go to any information center to search for their child's information," a staffer surnamed Yang from the Central Information Office of the Expo Park told the Global Times.
