Feature
By: Saidu Jalloh (Intern)
Street Begging in Sierra Leone is becoming a perennial problem that has seen both physically challenged persons and those that are physically fit to fend for themselves and family parading the streets of Freetown embarrassing people.
Street Begging is not only abhorred by the law, but also regarded by many as stigmatizing and devaluing. Successive governments of the country have made it hard for people to get their basic needs, the poor implementation of governments have left poor Sierra Leoneans to become poorer than imagined which has led to the less privileged taking to begging for food and money.
Child begging according to international Labour organization (ILO) is a form of forced child labour, but in Sierra Leone is on the contrary. In the capital city of Sierra Leone, these child beggars have taken strategic places in the city running after vehicles and passers-by in search of food and money or attention is a commonplace. They are exposed to physical, psychological and sexual violence by strangers. They are denied education and vocational skill that are vital to their adult development. The Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Person with Disabilities, Saa Lamin Kortequee said “I have challenged them many times if you want to beg take your wife or husband to the street to beg not your kids, guess what they will say, would rather let us send our kids to school and come back home hungry or dropout of school because of fees.”
The increase in the spate of begging has negatively affected the socio economic development of the country as these beggars, as a result of their poor status have become willing tool in perpetuating crime and other social vices thus affecting the security of the country which by extension has scared away potential investors thus making the economy to suffer.
However, it is ironical to see these beggars begging in front of state institutions like the Court of law, State House and Bank of Sierra Leone, institutions who have wrecked their lives.
It is also funny that those who are responsible for the predicament of those people by implementing poor policies give them peanuts and drive them out of their sight.
The increasing population of beggars in Sierra Leone cities constitutes an eyesore or environmental nuisance and health hazards particularly those carrying infectious and contagious diseases. Begging has serious implications for the city and national economy, as beggars are not economically productive in any way, since they contribute nothing to the economy. It leads not only to social relegation of the city but also to that of beggars as well as stigmatization.
Beggars constitute a social threat to the Sierra Leoneans society especially in the cities. They portray a bad image to outsiders or strangers. Some criminals hid under the guise of been beggars to perpetuate their evil deeds. They are at times used as a instruments by mischief makers, who use them to vandalize public properties and utilities built within the nation’s resources. The advent of Kush and other drugs have made it worse. Young boys that are young enough to work for their living are standing on the road side form a police checkpoint and start to beg. Begging has become part of their lives.
Begging is a social problem; most worrisome is the fact that public service is being debased in Sierra Leone on daily basis. Today each office you go in to there are Sierra Leoneans who indulge in one form of begging or the other. It is fast becoming an embarrassment across the country when an approaching a security officer, he politely ask what you have for the boys, or your boys are here ‘bra u Borbor them dea ya Oo’. It is either they are badly paid ir they are not satisfied with what they are doing. At the airport or seaport many of the immigration officers hold onto traveler’s passport asking them for a gift before checking them out in which ever is applicable.
The most unfortunate of these categories of beggars are those who pose as ministers of the Gospel to beg. They will tell you tales of how they are going for a church program but have no money to go and while some will preach the word of God in a public transport and next you will see them soliciting help for their service. Another set of beggars is those who always ask for transport fare. These people will stop strangers and tell them tales of story about how they want to go to Waterloo or Lumley but they have no transport fare. While an average person thinks in terms of dignity and the joy that comes from creating something which has the potential to change someone else life, professional beggars think in terms of one Leone. Can we continue like this as a nation?