By Rafiullah Mandokhail;
ZHOB: As Eid-ul-Fitr is just round the corner, the beggars having a roaring business mostly women and children adopting different tactics are seen roaming in the streets of the city. The beggars cause inconvenience to people visiting bazaars for Eid shopping. They can be seen roaming freely and minting money in all parts of the city, but an effective action against them is yet to be taken.
Beggar women carrying infants in their laps, aged men and children exhibiting different disabilities to win people’s sympathies and get alms from dawn to dusk in the city. The professional beggars came from Sindh and Punjab seeking alms and donations have flocked the city’s commercial markets, bus stand, shopping centers, sit outside the mosques, especially on Friday, and some are seen sitting along the road side displaying medical reports and doctors’ prescriptions attracting the passers-by to help them. But here in Zhob it has been also witnessed that most of the people don’t pay any attention to these beggars and treat them as professional beggars. Although the administration is responsible for the increasing number of beggars but neither the district administration nor police have chalked out a strategy to deal with the influx of the beggars thronged the city in fasting month. The child beggars often claim that circumstances have forced them into beggary as they have lost their parents and have no alternate source of income.
“Beggars create problems for citizens as they chase them and force them to get money,” said Abdullah Jan Amezai, a social activist.
He demanded the administration to take an effective step to discourage this practice.
Professional beggary is becoming a social menace as more and more beggars including physically fit, healthy and young men, women and children are turning towards this profession.