Task force's silence upsets missing woman's family

The Winnipeg family of a young woman missing for more than a year says they feel a newly formed police task force set up to investigate unsolvedcases likehers isn't doing enough.

Claudette Osborne, who also goes by the name Penny, was last seen July 24, 2008 in the area of Selkirk Avenue and Charles Street, in the city's North End neighbourhood.

There has been no trace of her since then, Osborne's sister, Bernadette Smith, said on Tuesday.

Smith said she felt a flicker of hopeher sisterwould be found after the Manitoba government, the RCMP and theWinnipeg Police Serviceestablished a task force in August to review cases involving missing and murdered women in the province.

But since then, there has been no news and investigators have not contacted Osborne's family, Smith said, adding her initial reservations about the task force are resurfacing.

'It's our family members they're investigating but yet we're left in the dark' Bernadette Smith

"We were kinda skeptical and thinking, well, are they just paying lip service?," Smith said.

In a statement, an RCMP spokesperson declined to answer any questions about the progress of the task force so far, but said some of the case files are very large.

It will take time to conduct the work, the spokesperson said. The task force is staffed with three RCMP officers, two RCMP analysts and four officers from the Winnipeg Police Service.

RCMP said if families have concerns, they should contact investigators by telephone.

But Smith said the task force has never given her family a contact number.

"So where do we call?," she asked. "There's no number, we haven't been given any updates. I mean, it's our family members they're investigating but yet we're left in the dark," she said.

Sisters in Spirit, an aboriginal women's advocacy group, said there aremore than70 unsolved cases of murdered and missing women in Manitoba.