RIYADH: Clad in black and with a baby in her lap, a woman sits on the ground shaking a cardboard box outside the door of a mosque.

She says she is from Jazan, a southern region of Saudi Arabia bordering Yemen, and begs every day outside the mosque in a Riyadh neighborhood of migrant workers.

Many of the South Asian men attending the mosque are low-paid laborers but they still spare a riyal for her. The box fills quickly as they drop a riyal after their prayers.

Charity is one of the main principles of Ramadan. Each Ramadan many more beggars take to the streets of the Kingdom.

But this year a leading charity is urging people to channel their generosity elsewhere. Alwaleed Philanthropies, the charity organization of billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, says begging is linked to "street gangs" and substance abuse.

"Cases of begging rise by 50 percent in the month of Ramadan," the organization said in a statement announcing its campaign, warning that giving money "only serves to perpetuate the problem."

It said the "reality of street-beggars" involved practices including "faking disabilities" and taking advantage of children, and that more than SR700 million was made in the Kingdom every year from begging.

The campaign provides a website directing people to the right charities.

Elsewhere in Riyadh, boys with cleaning fluid and squeegees offer their services as windshield cleaners in a variant of begging at traffic lights. They are mostly children from South Asia, East Africa and Yemen.

In 2014 authorities arrested more than 8,000 people for begging — 70 percent of them foreigners.

The presence of so many foreign beggars is due in part to the country's role as a destination for Muslim pilgrims.

Millions of pilgrims from around the world visit Saudi Arabia every year for Haj and Umrah.

The United Nations children's fund (UNICEF) has said that many poor families who enter Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage visa stay on illegally and become beggars, or leave children behind to beg and send money home.

Many beggars can be seen in Makkah and near the Grand Mosque. They are mainly women of various Arab, Asian and African origins, often accompanied by children.

— AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE