By Samar Al-Muqrin
TO forestall an imminent Anti-beggary administration fiasco, the administration should introduce a smartphone app under the name “Combating Beggary”.
Through this app, citizens and expatriates can contribute to the anti-beggary campaign by reporting cases of begging, a phenomenon that has become rampant in the cities and regions of the Kingdom.
I also suggest that the Anti-beggary Administration, an affiliate of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, should force the owners of shops, restaurants and cafes to bar beggars from squatting at the doors or in the close vicinity of their facilities. The administration should impose a fine on the owners if a beggar is found near their facilities. If there is a repeat violation, then the shop or restaurant should be closed down for a specific period.
Amid the aggravation of this crisis, the Anti-beggary Administration has no choice but to work hard and seriously to curb this nuisance. Usually beggary is caused by humanitarian ordeals. Some quarters take advantage of people’s suffering to collect funds for their ulterior motives. Hence this calls on every citizen and expatriate to be the city’s guard against beggary, so long as the administration cannot counter this phenomenon.
Apart from this, the Anti-beggary Administration should draw up a thorough media plan that ought to achieve its goals within a specific period. It should create awareness among the people on the dangers of sympathizing with beggars. The administration should provide alternatives by specifying those who are really in need. This category of people is the one that actually deserves financial assistance and not the gang of beggars.
It is also important to expose these gangs before the public. The citizens and expatriates should know wherefrom these gangs have come, what their goals are, the mechanisms of their work and how they exploit women and children. If such details become clear before the people, then they will contribute to curtailing the assistance that reaches these beggary gangs.
Actually, I tried to search for accounts on combating beggary on websites and social media, but I didn’t find any. It means that this administration is completely absent and nonexistent. This actually explains the absence of its work from the arena, which is a “confirmation” and not the leveling of “false accusation” against the Anti-beggary Administration that has not taken the trouble to even set up accounts for itself on these websites. Through these accounts, it would have at least created awareness among the people, especially since these websites and applications are channels that have a wider presence than on the conventional media.
Therefore, it is from here that I suggest after these long years of failure by the Anti-beggary Administration that it should ‘step down’. We should then have an authority or commission that is not under the Ministry of Labor and Social Development. It should bring “new blood” that is capable of tackling this issue!
