• Are they really needy or well trained professionals?
• Where is our government?
• Where are our welfare societies?
• What is our society doing?
Karachi is metropolitan city and among the biggest cities of the world. It is economical hub of Pakistan and the biggest city of our motherland. It is the capital of Sindh. Seaport and airport are its outstanding features. In spite of all above characteristics Karachi is the pub of problems.
One of them and a big problem which needs to be eradicated is street begging. Karachi city is fully business city. Here each and every kind of business is run so does street begging. Some actual deserving needy people come out of their homes and ask money, food and clothes for living their lives but among these needy ones many of them have become professionals. Now in fact they can earn bread but they are addicted of begging. They beg as they do jobs. They wake up early in the morning and get to their targeted places and start begging. In the buses, at the signals, on the roads and in the markets they do their work (bagging). Moreover, they train their children and send them to different areas to beg. Well trained children are found in the streets, on the roads, in the buses, in the markets, in the food streets. Professionally they do this work and collect enough amount of money. It has become their business to stand and make people listen their same domestic story so that people would have sympathy for them and they would earn money.
A six-year old girl asks money in such a very polite way as she has been trained well and almost every child beggar has the same words to ask money; like, “I am orphan, I have younger brothers, sisters, nobody is earner in my family, my mother is sick, and she needs money for treatment…...” Somehow these things are true too but not every beggar is true. Some are really needy, but many of them are professionals because their elders are shirker and bone Idle. And some of them have become victims of the business groups which are based on street begging. As it has been shown in the Bollywood movie “Slum dog millionaire” There must be severe actions against these cruel who make the children disable and handicap for their begging purpose.
Where are our authorities? Where are our welfare societies? Is this not the matter that must be looked after by our welfare societies regardless “Dastarkhuan” program? Is this not the work of our welfare societies and human rights organizations to provide shelter to the innocent and compelled people street beggars? These welfare societies have made the record in the world to have the largest ambulance services in Karachi. So can they not do something to remove street begging from this city? If the welfare societies can make the people eat meal and they spend millions of rupees in these sorts of programs so can they not do something for street beggars? Yes, they can get the jobs provided to them; they can help them financially to open their own small businesses even.
Children are actually the future of any society, if they are begging in present so what will be the future of this present? This is my humble request to the government, concerned authorities (if there is any) and welfare societies to make plan, join hands and convert these street beggars into workers. And children who are begging, who are wiping the windows of vehicles should be granted stipends and free education. Vocational training should be provided to them with education so that they would be able to work and earn, not beg and earn.
