90 Beggars Flee Enugu Rehab Centre

Commissioner for Gender Affairs and Social Welfare in Enugu State, Mrs Ndidi Chukwu has said that no fewer than 90 beggars undergoing rehabilitation have escaped from the state’s rehabilitation centre.

She said that the beggars escaped from the centre in Enugu by pulling down its doors, windows and pushing down the fence walls.

Speaking in an interview with the Newsmen last Friday in Enugu, while lamenting the destruction to the centre, she condemned the action of the destitute persons.

“Those people we call beggars are not really destitute, they are professional beggars who do not suffer any handicap.

“We have discovered that out of about 100 per cent of the destitute you see on the streets of Enugu, only about one per cent are destitute, the rest 99 per cent are professional beggars,” she said

According to her, even the few beggars we have are now marketed by those professional beggars.

“The professional beggars hired the destitute and other peoples’ children to be their guide for a day and after using them to make money, they would give them little percentage of their taking,” she said.

She said the professional beggars were able bodied men and women who were not sick.

“They where the ones who broke our rehabilitation centre doors, windows and fences and jumped through the wall and went back to the streets the next morning to resume begging.

“We don’t have problem with the mentally challenged people because if you keep them inside the rehabilitation centre, they will remain there but those professional beggars will run back to the street.

“The professional beggars are not suffering from any thing, their hands and legs are good, they are just begging because of societal challenges.

“The society in itself is encouraging the professional beggar because you will see some people throwing a bundle of money at them,“she emphasised.

The commissioner said the beggars were always on the streets because they made money more than some university graduates who were working. She said that some of them were making up to N30, 000 a day.

“We would have arrested them long ago but because of the human face of our governor, he would not want us to do something harsh to them,” Chukwu said.

The commissioner said she was alarmed at the growing rate of beggars in Enugu, calling on members of the society to assist her ministry in reducing the number of beggars in the streets by refusing to give them alms.