The coalition government is looking at establishing a nationwide taskforce on a bipartisan basis to address the issue of children accessing adult or pornographic sites in the country after it was revealed by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Communications Manoa Kamikamica in Parliament that adult content and pornographic sites is one of the top 10 most used data traffic in the country.
While responding to the question from FijiFirst MP Naisa Tuinaceva if there are any plans by the government to ban or regulate pornographic sites in Fiji, Kamikamica says for one network provider in the country, about 626.13 terabytes of data was consumed over the past three months related to adult content and porn alone.
He says the 626.13 terabytes of data when put into simple context is approximately equal to the amount of data stored in 100 million books.
Kamikamica further says another network provider in Fiji in the period of one month found that the total adult content was 92 terabytes, which is about 1.6 percent of their total data volume for one month.
The Deputy Prime Minister says they are also mindful that there are ways to bypass restrictions or blocking by the use of proxy servers or VPNs where people can access blocked websites through mimicking access virtually from another country of all websites including blocked content.
Meanwhile, FijiFirst MP Ketan Lal said that a report in the newspapers highlighted an app known as Telegram, which has been sharing nude photos of young girls and he asked the Deputy Prime Minister if he would consider immediately getting the networks to ban such apps.
Kamikamica told Lal that they will conduct consultations around the country before implementing such bans.
He says the previous government did not do anything about this issue in the last 16 years and they are now fixing their problems.
Kamikamica says when he first saw the question, what immediately came to his mind is how have we got into this situation where this sort of questions are being asked in Parliament.
He says they can talk about pornography, drugs, and all the social ills that they have inherited from the last 16 years which is why when he talks about rebuilding Fiji, its not only economic.
Kamikamica says a social and moral rebuild has to happen in Fiji to change the mindset of the people.
