The London Metropolitan Police have agreed to pay a further £150,000 ($270,000) to investigate the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
In September, the McCann family had reportedly been forced to shut down their website ‘The Madeleine Fund’ due to lack of financial support.
Funding for Operation Grange had also run out, meaning the McCann’s were also uncertain about the future of the task force set up to find their missing daughter.
Operation Grange has slowly lost momentum over the subsequent 11 years, having been cut from 29 detectives to just four in 2015.
The mysterious disappearance of Maddie McCann has remained one of the most famous missing person’s cases in the world since the toddler was presumably abducted from the family’s hotel room in Portugal, back in 2007.
Maddie’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have never given up hope that their daughter is alive in Portugal, and the extra funds mean there is still an opportunity that she may be found.
“They are very encouraged that the Met Police still believe there is work left to be done in the search for their daughter and they remain incredibly grateful to the Home Office for providing an extra budget for the investigation,” a spokesperson for the family said in a statement on behalf of the McCann’s.
The extra funding will guarantee the search for Maddie continues until March 2019.
But while Madeleine’s case has continued to tug at the world’s heartstrings, the latest development has caused major uproar on social media.
Social media users have criticised the use of the money, which comes from special grant funding available to police forces when they face exceptional costs.
Many took to Twitter to claim other tragedies are more deserving of funding – including homelessness, healthcare, education, as well as the Grenfell Towers tragedy.
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