Mr. Essandor addressing the students
The Senior Lead of IT Governance and Compliance, MTN Ghana, Prince Essandor, has cautioned Senior High School students not to engage in cyberbullying and cause harm to other internet users.
According to Mr. Essandor, recent reports have indicated that school children were found engaging in cyberbullying, leading to the recent increase in cyber-related cases.
“A student was recently arrested for engaging in cyberbullying activities by the police. Now most of your age mates are engaged in bullying people on the internet which is very worrying,”
Mr. Essandor made this statement at the commemoration of the Africa Safer Internet Day event held yesterday at the Osu Presbyterian Senior High School in Accra.
He used the occasion to encourage students on the better ways of using safer internet without bullying others.
According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 71 percent of young people between 15 and 25 years used the internet, far more than any other age group in every country for which data is available, adding they are more connected than the rest of the population.
At the same time, only 40 percent of school-age children have access to the internet at home with stark disparities across and within countries.
“Apart from what we do at MTN Ghana, we are very passionate about the well-being of our customers, especially students who patronise our services hence the need to organise programmes like this to educate and expose students to everything about cyber security,” he added.
Senior Manager Enterprise Information Security and Governance, MTN Ghana, Jacqueline Hanson-Kotei, reaffirmed MTN’s commitment to ensuring that no child gets bullied online as it advocates for safer internet use by children.
“We are engaging the students to equip them on how to stay safe online. Not to spend too much time on Tiktok and other social media networks. We have urged them to be mindful of the things they post online because online bullies are able to locate them with their posts,” she told the media.
The Headmaster of the Osu Presbyterian Senior High School, Vincent Esoah, made an appeal to MTN Ghana to support the ICT Department with laptops and other ICT-related equipment to enhance teaching and learning.
“The school has about 300 students studying ICT but has few laptops to enhance their learning. Anytime we have WASSCE, we are forced to rent laptops which cost the school a lot of money. We are appealing to MTN Ghana to come to our aid in providing the school with laptops to support our teaching and learning,” he said.
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke