To protect minors from online bullying and sexual exploitation, the government has moved in to formulate Child Online Protection and Safety regulations.
This will be a collaboration between the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection and Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK) where they will be formulating the rules as reported by KBC.
Speaking to the press in Lake Naivasha Resort during a consultative workshop last week, Josephine Oguye, director in the Children department, said the move come in handy as online predators were on the rise with many children being lured daily.
“We are working with the Communication Authority of Kenya and other stakeholders in coming up with a manual that will be used by the Ministry of Education in training the minors,” she said.
Statistics shows that 67 percent of minors aged between 12 and 17 years are internet users,
Oguye noted that some house-helps and relatives were taking nude pictures of the minors and selling them online for movie making abroad.
She added that the online predators were now using ‘dark web’ to browse and lure more minors terming the new technology as hard to track.
On the same breath, Dr Vincent Ngundi from CAK said that the guidelines for Industry on Child Online Protection and Safety were critical interventions as they provided the foundation for safer and more secure Internet-based services.
He added the regulations are important children may be unable to discern the suitability of content they came across from time to time.
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