JEDDAH, 21 May 2007 — About 90 percent of beggars in Saudi Arabia are foreigners and 30 percent of them are not poor but they have adopted begging as way to make quick money, according to a survey conducted by the department for combating beggary. The survey also found that 40 percent of beggars — who are found mostly at traffic points and in front of supermarkets, hospitals and mosques — are families. The department arrested 23,711 beggars including 3,573 Saudis last year.
The Council of Ministers recently set up a high-level committee to prepare a national plan for dealing with the problem of begging. It also decided to transfer all Saudi beggars to the Ministry of Social Affairs in order to provide them with training and jobs.
“The ministry should do what is necessary for the handicapped and child beggars within 24 hours of their arrest,” said a Cabinet statement. “Non-Saudi beggars will be arrested and transferred to the Passport Department to take appropriate legal action against them,” it added.
Begging has become common in the Kingdom’s major cities. Beggars try to attract sympathy by talking about their alleged diseases or handicaps, by wearing worn-out clothes and carrying children. In the passport of one foreign beggar, his occupation was “businessman.”
A woman beggar said she had a bank account in her country with a considerable sum of money in it. One beggar, who was sitting in front of a mosque pretending to be handicapped, ran away when he saw anti-beggary squad members.
Many beggars use modern methods for extracting money from the public. They wear good clothes and move around, narrating tragic stories to win sympathy and money. One may ask you to pay SR10 to refill his car’s petrol tank, saying he had left his money at home; another may request SR20 or SR25 for the treatment of his sick father. There are some women traveling about in limousines who will ask you to pay their taxi fare, giving different reasons for their request.
According to one study, the largest number of child beggars are found in Jeddah (92 percent) against 15 percent in Makkah and 7 percent in Riyadh. The UNICEF has called for a national plan to prevent the smuggling of children into the Kingdom. International mafias make $22 billion annually from the illegal trade of children. The social development committee at the Makkah Regional Council has set out a plan to prevent mafias from exploiting children and the handicapped for begging. It has called for fingerprinting pilgrims and reducing Umrah visas to those countries that send large numbers of beggars.
Saad Al-Shahrani, director of the anti-beggary department’s office in Jeddah, said about 90 percent of beggars were expatriates. “We have noticed that the largest number of beggars appear at the end of the month when employees get their salaries,” he said.
Some beggars arrested by the departments had huge amounts of money. A foreign beggar who came on an Umrah visa had collected a staggering SR72,000. “Recently we arrested an Asian man with SR42,000 and have handed him to police to investigate how he got the money. If proved that he got the money from begging, it will be confiscated and given to charitable societies.”
Shahrani said he had arrested three African children aged between 10 and 15, adding that they have been begging in Jeddah;s streets wearing abayas. He called for the cooperation of Saudis and expatriates to end beggary. “The easiest way to end beggary is to stop paying beggars any money,” he pointed out. Shahrani has deployed six squads in different parts of Jeddah to arrest beggars.
