Lilongwe City Council to forcibly evict all street beggars from Saturday

* There is a high record of rape incidences, thievery and vandalism emanating from street disorderly

* Police will put in the coolers parents of any street children found loitering in the roads of the four cities

By Mphatso Nkuonera, MANA

Minister Kaliati Minister of Gender, Community Development and Social Welfare, Patricia Kaliati announced that effective this Saturday, April 17 the Lilongwe City Council will start to forcibly evict all street beggars.

Kaliati said this on Thursday in the company of Lilongwe Mayor Juliana Kaduya as they jointly issued a stern warning to street beggars against loitering in the streets, saying they would face the law.

“Effective Saturday, Lilongwe City Council in collaboration with the police, will forcibly evict all street beggars, just like we do with street vendors,” Kaliati said.

She added that her Ministry has already engaged human rights organisations who she said come in with different views at times when eviction starts.

“There is a high record of rape incidences, thievery and vandalism emanating from street disorderly in the cities of the country.

“I have to make it clear that police will put in the coolers parents of any street children found loitering in the roads of the four cities,” warned the Minister.

While Kaduya chipped in to say: “All beggars must leave the city’s streets now that we have a reliable alternative of financial support. The law will take its course and the honeymoon is over.”

The two made the remarks when non-governmental organisation, GiveDirectly, was donating cash assistance to vulnerable individuals and groups in the country’s cities to cushion their suffering.

GiveDirectly’s Country Director, Shaunak Ganguly, said the monetary assistance was targeting  street kids, the elderly, the physically challenged and care givers so that they do not live a miserable life.

From the pilot phase, the organisation is satisfied the monetary assistance is making impact in the lives of the vulnerable groups, saying they have agreed to expand their aid base and increase the number of beneficiaries by 7,000 households.

“Our main aim is to complement government efforts to have a better society where begging, sleeping on empty stomach and failing to go to school due to lack of money become history,” Ganguly said.

Meanwhile, Kaliati further asked Lilongwe City Council to register all boys who are found in the cities’ dumping sites to be beneficiaries of the cash transfer program.

“Time is over that we should be seeing young boys chasing those vehicles carrying garbage to the dumping sites,” she said. “I expect them included on the list to be receiving these monthly cash transfers.

“This money is meant for such people, we want sanity in the cities,” said the Minister.

One of the beneficiaries of the programme, Weruzani Efelemu — who admitted to have begged for far too long — said reasons to retire from street begging were enough and he encouraged others to quit the malpractice voluntarily.

“I, just like my colleagues, used to be in the streets because of lack of support,” he said. “Now we have a different story, we already started receiving the cash aid directly into our phones, what else can encourage me into street begging?”

“I can assure everyone that if this exercise started way back, we would not have lived this hard life that forced us into the humiliating habit,” he said.

There are 400,000 street beggars in the country, according to Minister Kaliati.

GiveDirectly started the cash aid in February, 2021 to cushion over 200,000 vulnerable households against the socio-economic impact caused by the CoVID-19 pandemic.

The organisation has partnered with the government to expand the CoVID-19 Urban Cash Transfer Intervention in the country’s cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre, Zomba and Mzuzu.