The Ghana Police Service has urged church management to pay extra attention to the security of children who worship in their auditoriums.

Public Relations Officer at the Accra Region Police Comand, DSP Afia Tenge said, church security is structured to meet the needs of adult members to the neglect of children.

However, the “kids are very vulnerable,” she observed, adding that “you can walk into any Sunday school and pick [steal] a child and that is it.”

Speaking on Joy FM’s Christian family programme, ‘A Walk with Jesus’ on Sunday, she also urged church leaders to interrogate suspicious characters who patronise their premises.

“It is a public place yet it is a private space,” she said of churches. “We should be able to confront people and ask them questions. We need to look at the demeanor of people and ask questions,” she added.

According to her, such questioning reminds those with questionable motives that they are being observed.

Governments in the subregion have been on high-security alert following terrorism scare which is targeting churches and the Christian community.

The development which until recently was limited to Nigeria, has afflicted neighbouring Burkina Faso three times in less than two weeks.

Reuters reported that unidentified assailants killed four Catholics and destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary in northern Burkina Faso, a bishop said. This a third deadly attack against Christians in the West African country in the span of two weeks.

This puts into context the call of the National Peace Council asking the government not to limit training on detecting early warning signs of terrorism, to only members of the security.

Chairman of the Ashanti Regional branch, Right Rev. Christopher Nyarko Andam, said this at a meeting to swear in new members of the Council in Kumasi, the Ashanti region capital.