Muscat: Authorities in Oman are pondering new steps to deter beggars whose numbers witness a sharp increase during Ramadan and Eid each year.
“We are making every effort to contain begging in the society,” said Abdullah Bin Khalfan Al Tali, Head of the team tasked with curbing the menace at the Directorate-General of Social Care at the Ministry of Social Development, in a statement issued to media on Saturday.
Stringent rules are on the anvil to discourage the practice, Al Tali said. The recent crackdown on beggars in the country had revealed that the majority of mendicants are not from low-income families, he said. “These people were trying to find another source of income by begging.”
He, however, conceded that, “Despite the best efforts by the team, the practice is still continuing, especially during the Holy Month of Ramadan.”
The special anti-beggary team at the Social Care Ministry, in coordination with the Royal Oman Police, had intensified a campaign against begging, he added.
Al Tali noted that the number of beggars around mosques, malls and gas-filling stations became glaringly obvious during Ramadan each year. Nearly 99 per cent of beggars caught by the special task force were foreigners begging in Omani national dress, he added.
Those caught begging during the first six months of this year (298) reflected hardly any change in the situation given that the ministry had registered 553 cases for the whole of 2009, he said.
