Saudi and Yemeni authorities are making efforts to revive shelters at the Yemeni side of the border with the aim of curbing the smuggling of children to the Kingdom for begging.
“A joint committee of the Kingdom and Yemen has decided to conduct field studies with the help of the UNICEF to get a real cause of the menace,” Yemeni Minister of Social Affairs Ummah Al-Razzak, said on the sidelines of the recently concluded conference of social affairs ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in Riyadh.
The Saudi Ministry of Social Affairs arrested 3,772 foreign beggars from various parts of the Kingdom recently, Al-Watan daily reported.
The Saudi ministry’s annual report added that they included 1,691 child beggars. “Smuggling of child beggars almost disappeared in 2011 following the repulsion of 300 children at various border crossings to the Kingdom in the year before that,” the minister said.
Al-Razaq said the activities of the joint committee were not livley in recent times because of various reasons. However, she met with the UNICEF representative in Sanaa two weeks ago to discuss the issue and demanded revival of the efforts to discover the root cause of the child-begging phenomenon. “The aim of the study is to pinpoint the real cause instead of making guesses and unreal statistics,” she said.
She added that the support provided by the Kingdom has been making a remarkable impact on solving several social issues in her country such as infiltration of children to beg in Saudi Arabia.
The minister also commended the Saudi financial aid to Yemen, which resulted in steadying the Yemeni currency affected by political and economic issues.
Many Yemeni children could be seen begging at most of the road intersections in Saudi cities posing a threat to Saudi authorities.
According to earlier media reports the children make a lot of money through begging and do not want to leave the Kingdom.
Many of these children, who were caught by the anti-begging security forces and placed into a special shelter home said they were not willing to leave the Kingdom and would try to come again if deported.
Fateh Qaid, a 15-year-old Yemeni, whose mother and brother also begging in various Jeddah streets, said he was smuggled in with his younger brother Essam by smugglers from his country who used a side road named Makhadamah in the south of the Kingdom. Qaid described the smuggling operation into the Kingdom as very dangerous and said he and his brother were almost killed by Border Guards who chased their car.
Saudis, Yemen tackle beggar issue
