Ministry of Information Communications and Technology (ICT) Cabinet Secretary, Joe Mucheru has asked the Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK) to start filtering porn sites like Pornhub . This is in a bid to curb the rising cases of teenage pregnancies in Kenya.
This comes after the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC) chairman, Professor George Magoha, asked the government to block all pornographic sites in Kenya. According to Prof. Magoha, access to pornographic sites arouses sexual feelings among the teenagers thus leading to pregnancies.
“I am calling on the government agencies to use the power mandated to them to block pornographic sites,” the Professor said, this week. The increased teenage pregnancy cases has become a thorn in the flesh in the Education Sector with many students sitting this year’s exams with pregnancies and some breastfeeding.
The KNEC chair says the buck stops with the parents whom he blames for negligence. “Getting pregnant when you are not ready is a sign of moral decadence and negligence from parents. I think we, including myself, have been surpassed by the social media. So, can we start to teach these young people about their bodies?” posed Prof Magoha.
“The government is well aware that in order to harness the benefits of the digital economy and mitigate harms consequent to it, formulating a data protection framework is critical for the country. The Ministry established a Task force to develop Data Protection Bill and Policy, and this has already gone through the public participation stage,” CS Mucheru said when he addressed participants at the CIO 100 East Africa Awards. CIO East Africa is an authoritative IT magazine serving the CIO community in East Africa.
“We have seen in the recent exams in Kenya, that we actually now have a challenge with teenage pregnancies and this seems to be from the education sector that part of what the internet is bringing is that people are able to access sites they are not supposed to. What the Communications Authority should do is come up with ways to filter such content so that kids don’t access them. part of the challenge of all us is to educate our kids and parents against such content. We will be looking at ways of protecting our citizens from such content but we know you are also parents and care about yourselves and their future,” CS Mucheru added.
Already, the Education cabinet secretary (Dr. Amina Mohammed) has instructed officers at the Ministry to carry out an analysis of cases of pregnancies in schools for the last three years; 2016, 2017 and 2018.
CS Mucheru’s directive has not been received well by a section of Kenyans who say there is a little correlation between teenage pregnancies and accessibility to pornographic sites. “Only access to contraception, comprehensive sex education and Socio-cultural shifts will change Kenyan pregnancy statistics. There were countless teen pregnancies before the advent of internet pornography,” says Dr. Njoki Ngumi, a Health Care Giver in Kenya.
