Tanoso (Ash), Feb.08, GNA – Mr Stephen Ofosu, Ashanti Regional Director of the Department of Children under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) has called on parents and guardians to closely monitor their wards on internet usage.
This, he said was the surest way to better assess whether children were using the internet for things that enhanced their development.
He said though some children were using the internet to learn, others were using it to watch nudity contents and other immoral subjects that regressed their holistic development.
It was therefore important for parents to show keen interest on how their children used the internet to help safeguard their future.
Mr Ofosu was speaking at a ceremony at Tanoso in the Kwadaso Municipality to mark the 2022 Africa Safer Internet Day celebrations.
This year’s celebration was on the theme, “Together for a Better Internet”.
It was put together by the MoGCSP with support from Child Online Africa, a child focused research and advocacy NGO.
The Day, which falls on February 8, every year, is used to call on stakeholders to make the internet a safer and better place for all.
It is also used to spread awareness on online privacy and security.
Mr Ofosu said it was no doubt a higher percentage of children in Ghana had access to the internet, but it was incumbent on parents to ensure safe access of online contents by their wards.
He called on parents to put passwords or link their wards phones to their gadgets as a means to effectively monitoring their activities online.
The Department as part of the activities to mark this year’s celebration visited community households, markets, lorry terminals in the area to ascertain the level of sensitization young people go got before handling internet devices.
They also collated data on their responses to inform the next line of action.
Information gathered included the level of risks children encounter while using the internet, data purchased and awareness of safe and unsafe materials.
Other questions included how children secured their phones and protection and security strengths of their gadgets.
The team also visited two schools – John Williams International and Sefa Boakye Educational Complex and interacted with more than 400 pupils on internet usage issues.
Mr Ofosu advised the pupils to desist from using the internet to watch pornographic films, filming nudity and other programmes that incited violence in the society.
Mr Richard Sarpong, Ashanti Regional Programmes Director at the Department of Gender, said his outfit was doing its best to reduce sexual immorality amongst children which was why it had been actively involved in advocacies in schools.
He educated the school children on the proper ways to report sexual harassment to the right authorities.
GNA