Beggars at crossways

Thursday 2nd May, 2024

The police have embarked on a campaign, parallel to their war on drugs, to clear busy intersections of beggars who solicit alms near traffic lights, causing much inconvenience to motorists. Scores of beggars have already been arrested and hauled up before courts for doing so, we are told.

Sri Lankans drive and ride like bats out of hell, and champ at the bit at intersections to zing. Amber, for them, means ‘go’. So, the beggars at traffic lights not only become a nuisance to motorists but also run the risk of ending up as mere statistics in road fatality records. Police action to stop begging at crossways has therefore met with public approval, according to media reports.

In a bid to justify their operation against mendicants, the police have said most beggars collect thousands of rupees a day and therefore turn down offers of wage labour when they are rounded up. True, there are some beggars’ rings and their members collect a lot of money daily, but the same cannot be said about all panhandlers. More than 50 percent of people in the city of Colombo live in slums and shanties, according to researchers. Their lot has not improved in spite of urban yuppification projects and much-advertised densification schemes. The current economic crisis has made their lives even more miserable, and some of them have been left with no alternative but to beg.

The World Bank (WB) has said that ‘poverty rates continued to rise for the fourth year in a row, with an estimated 25.9% of Sri Lankans living below the poverty line in 2023.’ It has also pointed out that ‘labour force participation has also seen a decline, particularly among women and in urban areas, exacerbated by the closure of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Households are grappling with multiple pressures from high prices, income losses, and under employment’. So, the government must make a serious effort to help the indigent families crying out for help.

One wonders why beggars in public places should be singled out for legal action in a country which itself is notorious for begging. A minister of the incumbent regime, which pauperised the country, once posed for a picture, with cupped hands, receiving as he did a fistful of rice symbolically from a foreign envoy whose government donated a consignment of food items. The MPs are begging for duty-free vehicle permits with a view to selling them. Former Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage has won a money laundering case filed against him during the Yahapalana government over the acquisition of a house in a prime residential area in the city of Colombo. It is said that he revealed how he had raised funds to acquire that property. Going by his explanation, an MP can buy a house in the Colombo municipal area with the proceeds from the sale of his or her duty-free vehicle permit plus a one-million-rupee loan! No wonder the MPs are so desperate for duty-free vehicle permits. Some of them are begging for liquor permits as well.

Meanwhile, the police, who are all out to arrest beggars for obstructing traffic, ought to have the same high-octane performance in respect of others who have become a bigger nuisance to road users. Hawkers have encroached on pavements in Colombo as well as other cities, forcing pedestrians to walk on the road, risking life and limb. Bicycle and cart races are being held in many parts of the country, these days, and their organisers, riding motorcycles and waving flags menacingly, under the influence of liquor, terrorise regular road users, with the police looking the other way. The traffic police disappears from roads at the first signs of rain and remain dry while cities are wet and chaotic. Much more needs to be done than removing beggars from intersections to bring order out of chaos on roads.