Najibullah Khan
PESHAWAR: The increasing number of beggars in the provincial capital Peshawar has become a challenge for the authorities. The beggars adopting irritating techniques at shopping centers food outlets, restaurants till late night in a bid to collect maximum alms and charity depriving the deserving people of their due share in charities.
The city is flooded with the beggars these day, including male, female, children and persons with disabilities were being witnessed in traffic crossing points, mosques gates public places in the city.
Every day, we find a large number of beggars when we come out of any restaurant, shopping mall, and mosque or anywhere in the city. When you pay some amount to one of them, many others appear instantly and create a scene,” said a Peshawarite, Khalil Khan.
He added that these beggars are so irritating that they would never let anyone enjoy their dinner or shopping. “The worst thing is that they deprive those who are in real need and can’t do any job to earn livelihood.
Majority of them begging on the streets are those young men and women who are physically fit and can better do other jobs instead of asking for alms, however children who have been forced by parents to go to the streets and earn money to run the kitchen as well as to arrange for the luxuries and drugs of their parents.
Young girls and boys beggars carrying wipers in hands often start cleaning cars windows on traffic signals without permission in order to get money. It is risky to down the window panes of vehicles especially at the traffic signals as beggars of all ages start knocking them consistently to enforce resident to give something in charity. “I was studying in Class-II till a couple of years ago but my father is ill and we have no-one to feed our family, so my mother bought me this wiper to clean the windshield of the car. I don’t ask for alms but people give me money of their own free will,” said Shahid.
Many of them are professional beggars holding and carrying false medical prescriptions and disability certificates sit outside mosques to gain sympathy so they will get their alms. Some of them crying, weeping and chasing people in public places while wearing miserable cloths.
Among them large number of beggars of are drug addicted which is very serious issue that need to be address. They are not only stealing from home but their behavior is having negative impact on the society.
Beggary has been declared illegal. But unfortunately, The authorities concerned appeared to have turned a blind eye in this regard, campaigns against beggars in Peshawar were launched several time in the past years but the drive proved a complete failure as no preparations were made for rehabilitation of the beggars and breaking the network of professionals through proper investigation. The law has not been fully implemented on ground, which resulted in an increase of beggars day by day in Peshawar.
Resident of Peshawar of demand the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa KP government to take a strict action against them and take long-term measures to restrict child beggars and pick child beggars from markets, roads, traffic signals, street for their rehabilitation and give financial support in term of jobs and skill so they don’t return to the street for begging.
