The central regional police command has embarked on a sensitization campaign aimed at resourcing basic school pupils in the central region with knowledge on how to protect themselves against abuse.
The police noted that the statistics on child abuse have increased in 2017 as against 2016 hence the need for the campaign.
Dubbed “our day with the police”, the campaign sought to imbibe in pupils what they need to know about child abuse and what to do when they find themselves in such situations.
Speaking to 3news.com Public Relations Officer of the command, ASP Irene Oppong said they had observed that the children are more prone to abuse when they are on vacation.
“Basically we want to prevent crime and we have realized that during the school vacation period, the number of cases especially against children or child abuse cases go up, so we are here to sensitize the children for them to know what constitutes sexual abuse and also how they can prevent the crime from happening’, she told 3news.com.
ASP Irene Oppong said the initiative was in line with the Inspector General Police’s overall strategy of reducing crime.
“Again crime prevention or community policing is one of the key areas of the transformational agenda that the Inspector General of Police is piloting and regional police commander DCOP Mr. Paul Awuni has also bought into the idea”
It is the conviction of the police that the timing of the campaign was apt since it coincided with the vacation of basic school pupils.
“He [Regional Commander] thinks that this is the time that when we are able to give the information to the children as they are going home they will be able to help us achieve one of the objectives of the transformational agenda”.
She also stated there was the need to reach the children directly because parents have over the years proven not to be effective in sensitizing their children.
“And again we have also realized that when you give the information to parents, when they go home they feel reluctant to educate their children on it so we want to catch them young. We want them to understand the work we do”, she said.
The campaign team visited the Ghana police basic school, Bakatsir Methodist basic school, the Jacob Wilson Sey basic school among others where pupils were sensitized.
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