The Youth Arm of the Jamaica Labour Party, Young Jamaica, is blasting People’s National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding for using clips from Read Across Jamaica Day in political ads placed on social media on Thursday.

Young Jamaica finds it disappointing but not surprising that the PNP president has “elected to abuse an opportunity to connect with and embrace children for political expediency”.

“Young Jamaica finds that it is distasteful that the Opposition PNP would pervert a Child’s Month initiative in this manner and is calling on the newly established office of the Political Ombudsman within the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) to address the practice of exploiting the unauthorised use of the images of children for political purposes,” the group said.

Young Jamaica is demanding that Golding be instructed to remove the advertisement and apologise to the children and their families for using their images in his political campaign.

The youth arm is also calling on the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information (MESYI) to establish clear guidelines for disseminating images captured of children within schools.