Using children for begging

Tirunelveli:Using children in the 3-7 age group by beggars to evoke sympathy and consequently augment their revenue is on the rise in the twin towns of Tirunelveli and Palayamkottai in the recent past. The official machinery is yet to take action against them.A group of ‘child beggars,’ closely guarded by some ‘senior members’ or hirers, can be seen mobbing those who come out of leading eateries, bakeries, supermarkets and restaurants here.

The ‘earnings’ of the children are forcibly transferred to the ‘seniors’ for every 30 or 60 minutes. After the end of the day, nothing will be given to the boy or girl as their parents might have received the ‘rental charges’ in the morning itself.The most painful characteristic of this profession is that the women beggars, who hire children below the age of two, administer some sedative syrup to the babies, so that they will not be disturbing their business by crying all the time.“Since they are not their mothers, they tranquilise the babies and the infants can be seen sleeping all the time even under the hot sun and blaring cars and heavy vehicles,” the coordinator of a non-governmental organisation, which looks after widows and destitute children, here said.

When a sex worker was arrested recently in Tirunelveli Junction, she was taken to a home in Madurai.During interrogation, she requested the police to look after her five-year old son she had left at the place from where she was picked up by the law-enforcers. As the police were searching for the boy, much to their shocking, they saw him being used by a 75-year-old vagabond for begging.“After giving Rs.50 a day to the sex worker, the old man used to hire her son and pushed him into beggary. Now the boy is being rehabilitated,” a police officer here said.Recently, the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court directed the Madurai Police Commissioner and the district administration to submit a detailed report to the court on the steps taken by them to curb the menace of begging. Since the joint anti-beggars drive by the Madurai police and the district administration flushed them out of the ‘Temple City,’ they might have shifted their base to ‘Halwa City’, social workers here feel.

When the matter was tbrought to the knowledge of the then Collector, Atul Anand, at a government function, he immediately asked the officials to take all possible measures to check the menace.Subsequently, 12 little boys and girls, begging in and around Tirunelveli bus stand were taken to rehabilitation homes.“We expect such continuous operations in the days to come so that beggars hiring children and their parents would be forced to stop the ‘business’ immediately,” the social worker said.