“I am sick and tired of being followed by barefoot children who ask me for money or to buy some gum. I keep telling them to go away, but they don’t, and sometimes they reach for my hand and abaya which disgusts me,” said Joud Badr.

“I’m not against poor people, but it seems to me they are using children to make money and not encouraging them to get decent jobs.”

Beggars are at traffic signals and street corners, walking around cars and knocking at windows. “I hate it when I have just gotten my car cleaned and my windows are shiny, and then comes a beggar with filthy and germy hands and knocks on my window and sometimes stick his face on it and all the shininess is gone,” said Ahmed Abdulwahhab.

“I remember once, one child spat on my window when I refused to give him some money. I mean for how long are we going to put up with this?”

Street beggars are sometimes furious when people don’t give them money or food, according to Muhammad Hashem.

“I drive around in a fancy car and I make sure that this car is taken care of properly. I remember once that a young beggar was asking me for money and when I asked him to leave, he literally kicked my door with his foot then threw a Pepsi can at me,” he said.

“At that moment, I remember opening the door and running after him. When I came back, I found that a couple of his friends were heading to my car, trying to steal anything from inside it. I believe that those beggars are a danger to our community since most of them are illegal anyway.”

According to Saad Al-Shehri, spokesperson for the Jeddah municipality’s anti-beggars department, citizens should not sympathize with beggars because this encourages them to ask for more money.

“I suggest that if anyone wants to give sadaqa or zakat, they should donate to charity organizations and not these random people down the streets,” he said.

“People and the government should work together to curb this trend. We are trying our best to catch them and deal with them according to our rules and regulations.”