Child rights activist Lucky Mbewe has faulted government for its lack of commitment to employ enough child protection workers to ensure that the rights of children, more especially in remote areas, are protected.

Mbewe said government has been very slow in its effort to ensure that each and every community has child protection workers.

The remarks follows revelations that bad cultural practices such as kusasa fumbi, which is an act of child abuse, are still taking place in some areas such as Dedza.

Mbewe said: “We have seen that government has been very slow in deploying child protection workers in all the communities to be responsible for raising awareness, report the cases and also act as focal point where children can report whenever they fill infringed.”

He therefore said the absence of the child protection workers in most areas has resulted into a scenario whereby a lot a child abuse cases are taking place in silence.

But commenting on the development, Child Development Affairs Director in the Ministry of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare, MacKnight Kalanda, denied the assertions that government is non-committal to employ child protection workers.

“We have child protection workers on the ground both under government pay roll and volunteers and we are also reviewing their workload and we are negotiating with government so that more are included on pay roll,” he said.

Kalanda further said the duty to protect the children is not in the hands of government alone but must be a responsibility of every individual and organisations.

The need to boost fight against child abuse also comes following a recent scenario where Senior Chief Kachindamoto of Dedza closed a sexual initiation camp within her area where young girls were being forced to sleep with older men as a cultural practice in the name of kusasa fumbi.