Speakers at a discussion yesterday called for stronger government and private sector initiatives to protect children left at home by their working parents from harm in both the physical world and cyberspace.

The focus of local governments should be ensuring that child protection protection services are prioritised.

Over 100,000 social workers are needed in Bangladesh to adequately respond to the needs of vulnerable children, but currently there are only 3,000 social workers in the country, Unicef has said.