Many of these children, who were caught by the anti-begging security forces and placed into a special shelter home pending deportation to their homes, said they were not willing to leave the Kingdom and would definitely try to come again.
Fateh Qaid, a 15-year-old Yemeni, said his mother was also with him in the Kingdom doing the same business. He said he was smuggled in with his younger brother Essam, 10, by smugglers from his country who used a side road named Makhadamah in the south of the Kingdom. “This is a road most favored by smugglers,” he said.
Qaid described the smuggling operation into the Kingdom as very dangerous and said he and his brother were almost killed by the Saudi Border Guards who chased their car. He said when they reached Jeddah, they were accommodated in a popular house near the Yemeni market, in the south of the city, and told to go for begging at certain times of the day. “New men, whom we did not know, explained to us the methods of begging and showed us the streets which we should use,” he said.
Qaid said his daily income from the trade was about SR100 and that he had collected about SR24,000 during his stay of eight months. “The largest chunk of the money went to the smugglers and I was given very little of it. My brother was caught earlier and deported home,” he said.
Yasin Ibrahim, another Yemeni who is 13 years old, said they met their smuggler at an area known as Abu Hijra in the south of the Kingdom after they had crossed through Makhadamah road.
He said a number of people were overseeing them while they begged and took most of the money they had collected leaving them with very little. He said he was able to collect about SR200 daily during his short stay in the Kingdom and that the smugglers sent to Yemen about SR12,000 of the money he had collected.
Abdullah, an operator, said because of their fear of the security patrols that roam the vital locations, they generally send a small group of children as an advance team and if they were not caught, the guides would tell us that the streets were safe and would ask us to go out for business.
Ibrahim Ali, another Yemeni child of 11 years, said the smuggler would charge SR1,000 per head but the sum would go up when there was tight surveillance by the Border Guards along the mountainous and land roads. “This was the first time I was smuggled into the Kingdom but the other children with me in the same car had come three or four times before,” he added.
Ali, who mostly begged along Tahliyah Street, said his average daily income from begging was about SR90 but the smuggler would take more than two thirds of it.
Muhammad Ali Ahmed, an eight-year-old Yemeni child, said this was the first time for him in the Kingdom. He said they would usually start their business in the Jeddah markets at 10 a.m. and finish at 10 p.m. He said he would make about SR100 a day during normal days of the week but the figure might go up to SR800 during the weekends. “We would safely make a daily average of about SR2,000 during the Eid days,” he said.
Fourteen-year-old Najeeb Qasim said his grandmother, younger brother and cousin were all begging in Jeddah. He said his younger brother and cousin were caught and deported leaving him and his grandmother to carry on the business.
“My daily income is about SR200 of which the smuggler takes SR100 and the remaining amount is equally divided between me and my grandmother,” he said. Qasim said he was caught and deported three times before. He added that before he and his grandmother were caught the last time, they were able to send more than SR26,000 to his parents in Yemen.
Ahmed Banerman, a 10-year-old Somali child, said he did not want to leave the Kingdom because his aunt would force him to come again to Jeddah by sea. He said he was living in Kilo 7 and was begging in Bab Makkah before he was caught. He was making an average daily income between SR90 and SR130.
Ilham Abdo, a young Somali girl of 15, recalled that she was smuggled through the Red Sea with other 100 Somali children. “When we were in the boat, one of the girls died and her body was thrown into the sea. I got very scared and never thought I would make it,” she said.
Ilham said she was making about SR180 every day from begging along Tahliyah Street and her sister was making double this amount. “We lived in Bani Malik district and the smuggler would come every night to share the loot with us,” she said.
