Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

‘Professional’ beggars a menace

Thiruvananthapuram: Enforcing the ban on begging seems to have become an uphill task for the police as an increasing number of aged, diseased and mentally challenged people are wandering the streets of the capital city seeking alms.

The city is also slowly turning into a camp for migrant groups from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

These small groups live on city pavements, road-sides and on the campuses of educational institutions that have closed for the summer vacation. Some find shelter near construction sites or on empty plots of land near railway lines and major roads.

The men folk of such migrant groups stay behind to tend the camps or venture out looking for work while the women and children scour the city seeking alms.

These “mother and child” groups make a living mainly by pestering shoppers, foreign tourists and pilgrims into parting with a portion of their money. Such “professional” beggars ply their trade in an organised manner in the vicinity of shopping complexes, pilgrim centres, hotels, parks and busy markets.

In the process, they push the aged and the diseased, who are genuine candidates for charity, to the sidelines.

In the past, several petty crimes such as pickpocketing and day-time burglaries have been traced to wandering groups camping in the city.

The ban on begging was imposed in 2003 in accordance with the section (3) of the Travancore Begging (Prevention) Act, 1945. The government vested the police with the power to impose the ban.

Earlier, in the absence of any law to prevent begging, the police used to pick up beggars camping on the pavements and drop them outside city limits in police buses. However, such measures had come under severe criticism from human rights organisations and were dropped.

A police official said there was a need to distinguish between those who were in genuine need of help and others who had made a lucrative profession out of begging. Migrant groups of beggars consisted mostly of minors and women who were healthy, he said.

Streetchildren, who form a sizable segment of alms-seekers in city, are vulnerable to wanton cruelty, sexual exploitation and drug abuse. A majority of them are hooked on petrol, liquid shoe-polish and adhesives which contain addictive substances.

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