"The creation of a safe internet environment is one of our main objectives. To attain this we need to educate and raise awareness amongst parents, teachers and children." Minister for IT & Investment, Austin Gatt, said whilst addressing a Press Conference related to the signature of the second agreement between Government and Childnet International, aimed at providing the Government with a number of Internet Safety resources to be used to distribute to parents, schools and children.

Minister Austin Gatt announced that a survey commissioned by the Ministry showed that 62% of individuals have access to internet at home, while 78% of individuals with children (under 16) in their household reported to have internet access at home. 52% claimed that they know what to do when hearing of internet child abuse cases, while 41.6% know of the existence of an internet child abuse service, half of which were able to mention the name of the service by Appogg.

Minister Gatt said that these statistics show that awareness of the possibility of child abuse has increased in the past years through the efforts of the Government and its Agencies namely Appogg. These statistics also show the need for further awarness and education in this domain. "It is the moral duty of everyone to protect our children from harm. At the same time we need not scare children away from the world of learning and knowledge technology can give them."

The press conference was also addressed by Mr Joe Gerada from Appogg and Mr Stephen Carrick-Davies, CEO of Childnet International.

The second agreement with Childnet includes a licence for use of all Childnet's kidsmart training materials, an internet safety kit for students, safer internet resources for teachers, and a train the trainers programme. Mr Carrick-Davies, while commending Government for leading the way in the creating a safe environment for children during the time it was focused in attaining good results in the various benchmarking exercises. He added that the final aim of the non-profit organisation is to "help make the internet a great and safe place for children" and it is their pleasure to assist Government in doing so in Malta.