RIYADH, 19 October 2003 — With expatriate beggars remitting an estimated SR250 million annually, the government is cracking down on begging ahead of Ramadan.
The campaign started last Thursday under the slogan “Not Every Beggar Is in Need,” Okaz newspaper reported, but already officials from the Anti-Beggary Department in the last two months arrested some 1,100 beggars, most of them overstayers.
The chief of Jeddah’s Anti-Beggary Department, Saad Al-Shahrani, told the paper the office would intensify its efforts during Ramadan.
He said instead of giving money to beggars people should consider donating to charities. Beggars in Jeddah could be reported by ringing 687-1762, he added.
The slogan of the campaign in borne out by a study conducted by the Anti-Beggary Department. “The annual income of a beggar ranges between SR18,000 and SR35,000,” the study said. “More than 7,000 beggars including women and children were arrested in the recent past in Jeddah alone, of which the majority were African nationals.”
A Pakistani beggar was recently arrested in a market in Jeddah with SR72,000 in his pocket.
The total number of beggars in the Kingdom is estimated at about 100,000, with an average individual daily income of about SR50. The situation is not helped by the fact that there are about half a million unemployed expatriates in Saudi Arabia.
But Saudi nationals too are involved in the profession. Another survey conducted by Dr. Abdullah Al-Yousif of Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University, says 69 percent of child beggars in Riyadh are Saudis, including 56.6 percent of them girls.
Growing unemployment, an increasing population and falling per capita income have brought a segment of the Saudi population face to face with poverty. “Beggary is just a manifestation of the explosive situation,” the study said. “At all intersections, beggars approach. At times, entire families are engaged in the profession.”
Many say that begging is organized as efficiently or more so than many legitimate professions. “In Makkah, many people are asking for alms,” the study said. “There are women with children outside most of the mosques after Friday prayers seeking help by holding out their hands.”
Dr. Al-Yousif’s study also reveals the social conditions in which the beggars and their families live. He found that 88 percent of the mothers of begging children are illiterate, while nine percent did not go beyond elementary education.
Sixty percent of the children’s fathers are married to another woman, and 50 percent of fathers are unemployed. Some 62 percent are illiterate and 34 percent did not go further than elementary school, the survey found. The study also showed that 90 percent of families with children who beg live in public housing.
