The government will begin blocking websites that contain locally generated pornography, obscene pictures and video contents, from next week, State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim said today.

About 70 to 80 percent of the pornography sites, operated from overseas, will also be blocked at the same time, she said while talking to the reporters this evening.

"We are trying to impose some restrictions in browsing random pornography sites, particularly for those who are under the age of 18 years," Tarana told The Daily Star.

On November 28, Tarana met Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, law enforcement agencies, ICT division, telecom department and information ministry officials to discuss the issue and formed a committee to find out a way to detect the porn sites.

"In the meeting, we shared a list of porn sites to all internet service providers and internet gateway operators to block those," Tarana said.

Next week, the committee will sit again to fix the next course of action, she added.

"We also want to follow the good practices in different countries in this regard," she said.

Last year the High Court directed the government to stop pornography and obscene picture from being uploaded and sent through mobile phones and social media including Facebook and Twitter.