Bangladesh Plans Jail Threat to Deter Beggars
By Maseeh Rahman, in DelhiThe Guardian
Bangladesh's newly elected government plans to eradicate begging from the streets of Dhaka and five regional cities during the next five years, after pushing an anti-begging bill through parliament this week.
Mir Md Aslam, a spokesman for the social welfare ministry, said the government was preparing enforcement plans that would include a maximum of three months' jail for anyone caught begging in a public place. Guidelines were expected to be in place within a month.
As part of the effort to dress up India's capital for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the Delhi state government was also planning to introduce legislation to replace a 1959 law against begging.
Even though the proposed anti-begging measures will affect hundreds of thousands of poor urban people, there has been no public debate in either country as details are not available about the plans.
However, in response to a public interest petition, a division bench of the Delhi high court has asked the social welfare department to reveal how it plans to rid the capital of beggars. The judges remained unimpressed by a lawyer's attempt to portray begging as criminal by evoking scenes from Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.
The court said: "Slumdog Millionaire may be important for people abroad but not for us, for whom poverty is sadly an everyday sight." Begging was a "human problem, a combined result of poverty and the presence of criminal gangs who exploit the poor", officials said.
Farah Kabir, ActionAid Bangladesh's country director, said: "The [Bangladeshi] government needs to spell out how it will achieve the ambitious target of eliminating begging in five years. We need to see the plan. We will welcome it if the plan is to move people out of poverty, to provide beggars with an alternative livelihood. But the question is, will it just be a measure to make the poor invisible? This was tried in the 1980s when beggars were moved to specially designated villages, but it failed."
Bangladesh had an estimated 700,000 beggars six years ago, but the number has reportedly risen.
In India, a recent study put the number of people begging at 7.3 million.
Though Dhaka's plans are still under wraps, the Bangladeshi finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, recently told a meeting of development organisations that a rehabilitation scheme for training, education and employment for rural and urban beggars would soon be formulated for use through public-private initiatives.
Bangladesh's celebrated Grameen bank already has a beggar rehabilitation programme, according to its founder, Muhammad Yunus, who said this week that the bank had given interest-free loans (each worth £9.50) to 100,000 beggars in Bangladesh.
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/03/bangladesh-jail-beggars
