Keep city streets clear from child beggars
BEGGING by children in city streets is a social nuisance and its intensity before the Eid festival appears more harassing to city dwellers going to shopping. A roundtable discussion titled “Role of Corporate Sector and Civil Society in Eradicating Child Begging” organised jointly organized on Thursday by daily newspaper Prothom Alo and Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) discussed the nature of the social malice and weighed out how coordinated efforts by the government and non-government organizations (NGOs) would help to stop it from city streets. This roundtable discussion came about after failed previous efforts to restrict beggars’ presence in certain areas or send them to rehabilitation centers. The Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Mayor stressed the need for the creation of a demographic database of the country’s beggars and shared information on his initiatives to set up 200 schools in Dhaka’s north where street children can study and thus put an end to child begging. The Coordinator of Psychosocial Lab, Institute of Educational Development at BRAC University said children are fed sleeping pills to keep them drowsy during begging which harms brain activity at such a tender age. As these children cannot grow up naturally, they eventually get involved in destructive activities later in their lives. The Director of the Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies at Dhaka University, suggested parents should be included as a target group to stop child begging. The Mayor of the North said DNCC would give assistance to solve the problem and invited the participants of the discussion to come up with specific plans.
Begging has been an age-long social problem in Bangladesh. Many of the reasons behind it include destitute parents not being able to feed children, teenagers or adults with substance abuse or mental health difficulties who beg to support drug habits as well as able-bodied individuals who take to begging to exploit people’s kindness. As the basic reason for begging is that the children have no alternative to feeding, the government should embark on a programme of providing basic food in the schools for a period of at least one year, which would also help lessen child labour by putting children back to school. They should also be given monthly survival allowance for physical disability to alleviate their plight and keep them off the street. The government and non-government organisations should encourage people to put money in charity boxes placed at strategic places rather than putting money in the hands of beggars which would only encourage them to continue begging. The donations can be then given to welfare agencies to take care of the less privileged. If the government makes genuine efforts to eradicate poverty without allowing resources to be spent through corruption by dishonest people and law enforcers keep beggars away, street begging will be a thing of the past.
Begging has been an age-long social problem in Bangladesh. Many of the reasons behind it include destitute parents not being able to feed children, teenagers or adults with substance abuse or mental health difficulties who beg to support drug habits as well as able-bodied individuals who take to begging to exploit people’s kindness. As the basic reason for begging is that the children have no alternative to feeding, the government should embark on a programme of providing basic food in the schools for a period of at least one year, which would also help lessen child labour by putting children back to school. They should also be given monthly survival allowance for physical disability to alleviate their plight and keep them off the street. The government and non-government organisations should encourage people to put money in charity boxes placed at strategic places rather than putting money in the hands of beggars which would only encourage them to continue begging. The donations can be then given to welfare agencies to take care of the less privileged. If the government makes genuine efforts to eradicate poverty without allowing resources to be spent through corruption by dishonest people and law enforcers keep beggars away, street begging will be a thing of the past.
