Why the govt repeatedly fails at taking beggars off the streets
For two decades the government has taken a number of steps to remove beggars off the streets - arrest, detention, compensation, rehabilitation etc. By most accounts, the number of beggars on the streets have increased
Mohammad Shukur, a 40-year-old physically-challenged man, used to beg in the Pabna district town area. At the start of this year, the Pabna district administration gave Shakur Tk35,000 in an effort to rehabilitate him and in doing so, take him off the streets.
It has been only four months since the local administration provided Shukur with grocery products worth Tk31,000 (including rice, cooking oil, pulse, etc) and Tk4,000 in cash to set up a shop. But Shukur has gone back to his old profession of begging in the street.
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"The government has provided me with Tk35,000 for setting up a shop and I ran the shop for around four months. But I could not run my family with what has been given to me," Shukur told The Business Standard over the mobile phone recently.
Shukur explained that the shop was set up at his home instead of on the roadside. As a result, the shop did not see much sales. Consequently, his family members consumed the products.
The local social service official in Pabna claimed it is hard to monitor the activities of all the families who receive government benefits.They also lack exact data on how many beggars returned to the streets after receiving benefits.
Beside Mohammad Shukur, the Pabna district administration gave out goats, cows and rickshaws to more than 100 families in the town to make them self-sufficient and pave their way out of a beggar's life. Pabna is one of the 64 districts in which the government has been allocating money every year to rehabilitate beggars. However, most beggars are selling the things the government has provided them.
Experts say the government's initiative lacks vision. Rickshaws, vans or providing the means to set up shops in different environments, do not change the mindset of 'professional' beggars. They need counselling as well to permanently change their livelihoods.
Different interventions
In 2010, the Department of Social Services took up a programme titled "The Rehabilitation and Alternative Employment of Population Engaged in Begging" in an effort to eradicate begging from the capital's streets and different districts across the country.
The programme did not gain momentum at the time. In 2017, the government agency allocated money for 58 districts to put an end to begging from the local level. Now the government allocates money to all 64 districts.
The government spent Tk18 lakh to conduct a survey on beggars at the start of the programme in 2010. The government also took an initiative of rehabilitating 37 beggars in Mymensingh in 2012, and later 29 beggars in Jamalpur. Both initiatives did not see success.
Under the programme, the government, at different times, has constructed houses for beggars and bought training equipment too. The Department's internal documents show that the government has so far spent more than Tk42 crores and provided benefits to more than 14,000 beggars in all 64 districts.
The government has already declared different areas of the city as beggar-free areas, although none of that exists in reality.
Additionally, government agencies are launching drives in different areas of the city to arrest beggars. In the 2021-2022 fiscal year alone, government agencies arrested 2,600 beggars. The government released 1,805 beggars on condition that they will not beg again, while the rest of the 795 beggars were sent to different shelter centres across the country.
Sixteen temporary dormitory buildings are currently being constructed in five shelters across the country to accommodate beggars.
The Department of Social Services officials said that there is no exact data on how many people are now engaged in begging in the city, as well as across the country. In the fiscal year 2017-18, the social service office sought lists of beggars from the district commissioners across the country. The district commissioners, at that time, estimated the number of beggars as 2.5 lakhs.
Like Mohammad Shukur, the Pabna district administration provided Tk30,000 to Alauddin Sardar. But Alauddin said he is not a beggar. So why did the administration give you money? "I am physically challenged. I lost one leg in a road accident when I was a 15-year-old boy," he replied.
The 60-year-old Alauddin owned a tea stall, but the local administration evicted the shop. Now, he works in a gengi shop and earns Tk700 per week. He said he had invested the money the district administration gave him in the genji shop, owned by his friend, in the Bangla Bazaar, in Pabna town.
"I have never begged on the streets but I did go to the DC office several times to get monetary assistance," said Alauddin Sardar.
Lacklustre implementation
In 2018, the government outlined a policy paper to bring down the number of beggars in the country and generate alternative employment for beggars. "The Guideline of the Programme on the Rehabilitation and Alternative Employment for the People Engaged in Begging", formulated by the Department of Social Services, calls for the formation of committees at different levels of the local government.The committees in Dhaka city, which hosts the highest number of beggars, are non-operational.
According to the guideline, the city corporation will have three committees: ward level, region level and an implementation committee. However, a city corporation official said they have little idea of the committees.
Dhaka North City Corporation's Zonal Executive Officer (Zona-3) Abdullah Al Baki told TBS, the social welfare department of the city corporation works in this regard. "We act as magistrates with the Department of Social Services when they conduct raids in our areas at various times. We do not operate separately. Besides, North City Corporation does not have any regional committee in this regard."
Akand Mohammad Faisal Uddin, Chief Social Welfare and Slum Development Officer of Dhaka South City Corporation told TBS, "The social service department of the government mainly works on the rehabilitation of beggars. There is no current programme for beggars in South City Corporation. No work has been done in the last three years. We mainly work with low-income people."
The Guideline also states that each city corporation will hold regular meetings. It will also undertake activities related to the rehabilitation of beggars and donations/grants. Akand Mohammad Faisal Uddin said, "I don't know if there is a committee. Besides, no meeting was scheduled regarding the beggars."
Mohammad Mamun-Ul-Hassan, Chief Social Welfare and Slum Development Officer of Dhaka North City Corroboration said, "There is no initiative for beggars' rehabilitation. We have nothing to do with it." In reply to whether there is any committee and whether meetings are held, he said, "Maybe there is a committee. As far as I remember there was once a meeting."
The beggars in Dhaka are mostly dealt with through mobile courts. The city corporation and social service officials launch drives in different parts of the city, pick up beggars and keep them in the Government Shelter Centre in the Mirpur area.
The Centre does not allow journalists to speak to the beggars inside its premises. This was informed by Mohammad Al-Amin Jamali, the chief of the Government Shelter Centre in Mirpur.
Beggars are arrested from different places in Dhaka, and executive magistrates order the concerned authorities to keep the beggars in custody, on different terms, between seven days to six months.
The social services officials in different districts said that the committees at their districts did not hold meetings on a regular basis in the past. Now, most of the district has to hold meetings because budget allocation is coming regularly.
Rashedul Kobir, deputy director of Social Services Office Pabna, said that the upazila and the municipal committee hold meetings on a regular basis. "We held a meeting two months back; we will hold another meeting soon," said Rashedul.
This is not the first time the government has taken the initiative to rehabilitate beggars.
Rashed Khan Menon, former social welfare minister and the chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on the Ministry of Social Welfare said that during the regime of Hussain Muhammad Ershad in the 1980s the then government took an initiative to rehabilitate beggars, but it failed.
"Poverty has come down so those begging on the streets are professional beggars. The government will have to force them to stop," he said.
The drives and shelter homes
There were 31 beggars in the city's shelter home in Mirpur when this correspondent visited the place. The authorities had launched a drive on the same day in the city's Uttara area and arrested some more beggars. The executive magistrate of the city corporation led the drive and sent nine beggars to the centre.
Mohammad Al-Amin Jamali told The Business Standard that the shelter centre has 200 beds, but the government recently built tin-shed facilities with 50 beds exclusively for beggars.
There are two ways for beggars to arrive at the shelter centres: by court order or directly from police stations following a general diary. When the number of beggars at the centre increases, the authority sends beggars to the six more shelter centres across the country, including ones in Mymensingh, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Manikganj. The government is also building tin-shed facilities there to keep beggars.
The day before, the authorities had launched a drive in the Mirpur area and arrested 11 beggars. Once brought to the centre, officials carry out a search and seizure. They keep things like mobile phones and cash from the beggars. Generally, when the beggars are released or transferred to other shelter centres, they give back the things.
The authorities searched the 11 beggars from Mirpur and seized Tk4,500. Before Eid, the authorities arrested around 40 people in two separate drives and to their surprise, they seized Tk97,000 from the beggars in a single day. They seized Tk42,000 from a single person.
"They stay in different slums in the city but they never keep a single taka at home; they always keep their money on them," said Mohammad Al-Amin Jamali.
During the month of Ramadan, every day, the shelter received 15 to 30 beggars. They sent them to different shelter centres across the country. After the term (set by the magistrate) ends, the beggars are released, regardless of whether someone from the family comes to receive them.
Jamali said professional beggars do not get arrested that often because they know how to avoid law enforcement drives. "When they see the police in uniform, they flee the spot. Those who are new to the profession get caught," said Jamali.
Why does the initiative keep failing?
Experts said the government is trying to change the profession of beggars overnight, which is not possible. The first thing that needs to be done is to provide the beggars with psychosocial counselling to bring a change in their mindset, because they have been begging for ages.
"What the government is doing now is picking up beggars and keeping them in shelter centres or providing them with rickshaws or rickshaw vans for income generation," said Mahbul Haque, who has been working on beggars in Dhaka city for more than a decade.
Mahbul Haque's defunct NGO, Bangladesh Rehabilitation Centre for Trauma Victims, participated in conducting a survey on beggars in the city in 2010 for the Department of Social Services, along with nine other NGOs. The survey found that there were 10,000 beggars in the capital alone in 2010.
Mahbul Haque said that the survey is still conducted annually and the number of beggars has increased by two to three-fold since 2010. "Beggars want to be rehabilitated in the places they are begging. They do not want to be shifted to their village home or other places," said Mahbul Haque, currently secretary general of the NGO Human Rights Development Centre.
Haque believes the government will have to bring beggars under the social safety net and at the same time will have to train beggars to bring them into the job market. The government could engage students from different university's sociology departments, as interns, to provide beggars with psychosocial counselling.
Amanat Ullah Khan, a retired professor of urban geography at Dhaka University, believes that taking and keeping beggars at different shelter centres will not solve the problem.
"Keeping beggars at the shelter centres will have a negative impact on the beggars' life, because the beggars have a social network of relatives, friends and acquaintances. The network will collapse," said Khan.
Khan added that as most of the beggars in the streets are professionals, the government can use the traffic police to stop them from begging, treating it as a traffic-related crime. Another thing the government can do is to create awareness among passengers so that they do not give alms to beggars.
Begging is a profitable profession
The state minister for the Social Welfare Ministry Ashraf Ali Khan Khasru said that there are no beggars in the country, and those who are engaged in begging in the streets are all professionals. That is, people who are not interested in alternative employment even if offered.
"We have asked the district commissioners across the country to provide us with lists of beggars but the district commissioners could not give us the list," said Khasru. "The district commissioner of Jamalpur sent a list of around 200 beggars. The Netrokona district could not give us any list of beggars. There are apparently no beggars in Netrokona," said Khasru.
Khasru claimed the number of beggars has come down, but there are some seasonal beggars who come to Dhaka before Eid. "You will see that the number of beggars goes up from 21st Ramadan to the day before Eid. They disappear after Eid."
There are some spots in Dhaka city where people find beggars - the Bijoy Sarani intersection, and the Gulshan-1 and Gulshan-2 intersection. "You will not find any beggars in any other place; you will not find beggars in Old Dhaka," said Khasru.
The minister reiterated all the steps the ministry has taken so far to rehabilitate beggars.
"But the problem is that they stay at the house for six months and then come back to their profession after selling the things we gave them, because begging is a profitable profession," said Khasru.
"It is hard to control these professional beggars," the minister concluded.
