Sex education videos for children viewed 2.79 mln times in just three months

0

KUALA LUMPUR: Several videos on sex education for children that were published on YouTube by the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry last June have been viewed 2.79 million times, Deputy Minister Hannah Yeoh said.

She this figure, registered as at Oct 4, showed a significant trend for the ministry in its efforts to reduce child sexual abuse in Malaysia.

“In terms of the ‘view rate’, meaning if the video is one-minute long, the overall video view rate is 43 per cent, and this is higher than the industry average view rate of only 20 per cent.

“So others, when they do it (upload videos on YouTube) the industry average view rate is 20 per cent, but for our video, it is 43 per cent, so it is a very good trend and they have 67,000 likes and shares,” she said at a press conference in the Parliament lobby here yesterday.

On June 24, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who is also Women, Family and Community Development Minister, launched five videos on sex education for children via the YouTube platform.

The series of one-minute videos in Bahasa Melayu, produced by the ministry in collaboration with non-governmental organisation Malaysians Against Pornography and Google as the operator of YouTube, were initially targeted to draw 150,000 views among children this year.

Earlier, during the question-and-answer session, Yeoh said the ministry was currently in talks with the Public Service Department (PSD) to increase the number of child protectors in the country.

She said so far Malaysia has just over 200 child protectors for about 9.4 million children.

“Based on our current population of children, we need 1,500 child protectors, so we are in discussions with the PSD to get more manpower in this regard,” she said in reply to a supplementary question from Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh (PH-Ledang), who wanted to know if the government was cooperating with relevant parties to protect children. — Bernama