AN institution to serve as watchdog in guarding against the abuse of children in drug trafficking and child pornography through the internet, should be part of the Namibia Press Association's (Nampa's) mission to help protect and educate the country's people.

This idea was yesterday proposed by the vice-chairperson of the National Council, Margareth Mensah-Williams, when she addressed the council on the Namibia Press Agency Amendment Bill.

"Sexual exploitation of children via the internet has become so prevalent that it is said to have become a serious problem, according to the End Child Prostitution on Trafficking. IT provides both easy access to children and a reduced risk to offenders of being identified, to remain anonymous or to misre-present their identity," warn-ed Mensah-Williams.

According to her, sexual offenders target children with particular characteristics such as those with learning and social difficulties and who are emotionally immature.

"Such offenders, especially sugar daddies, normally approach children between the ages of 10-17 years. These abusive sugar daddies should be made aware that they should keep their willies to themselves. They should be rehabilitated to become pro-ductive citizens," she suggested.

In her opinion information that has a detrimental effect on children is too freely avail-able on the internet.

"No wonder we have so many suicides in our country because explicitly docu-mented violence, hate pro-paganda, information about drugs and weapon manu-facturing, pictures of suicides and how to commit suicide are all freely available," she said.

Mensah-Williams urged Nampa and the nation to take part in educational campaigns on internet uses and risks.

Swapo member Johnny Ha-kaye Haikella praised New Era for becoming a daily when addressing the House on the same Bill.

"However, the paper should expand its news coverage to all regions, not only Windhoek. What is con-sidered to be news to Wind-hoek does not necessarily mean news to people in other regions," Haikella said.

"Nampa should be proper-ly equipped for its tasks because information techno-logy is being used to ruin poorly equipped nations. Such technology is in many cases used and abused to distract and even instigate evil and unrest in countries such as Rwanda and Iraq. Namibia itself is also vulnerable to such destructive technology," Haikella said.

"Information supply should be put to good use and not be abused to the extent where the interests of the country are in danger. A legal containment instrument should be put in place," he said.

Swapo's Generosa Ando-wa was more direct in her critique of certain news-papers, which in her opinion are distorting the truth.

"We have had this problem since the dawn of our inde-pendence with some news-papers who act as agents of foreign countries under dis-guise of democracy. A num-ber of them specialise in insul-ting and defaming our lead-ers," Andowa, who identified The Namibian and the Wind-hoek Observer as culprits, said.

Kaptein Erasmus Hendjala welcomed the amendment Bill and expressed the hope that it is only the beginning steps of improving Nampa's situation.

"The Bill allows Nampa to disseminate information world-wide and to put Nami-bia's case into perspective internationally, instead of the Western perspective of African news coverage which only include wars, poverty and drought. Nampa's opera-tions should be broad-based in information gathering, unlike many local newspaper editors that are constantly killing local news. Seventy percent of the local news media are destroying and misleading the Namibian people," Hendjala claimed.

He further encouraged the national news body to train its people for better quality service in information techno-logy and to help empower the Namibian people.