Write an article in about 180-200 words for a newspaper making a case for a total ban on begging.
Answers
AN interesting debate has been taking place in the Nigerian Senate for the past several weeks. At issue is whether a ban on begging, which has been instated by the city government of Lagos (Nigeria’s largest city), should be extended to all cities in Nigeria.
In Lagos, the police have rounded up all people found begging in public spaces and asked them to pay a fine. Since most cannot pay the fine, they are put in prison and remain there until they can come up with the money. According to government officials in Lagos, April saw over 1,300 people taken off Lagos’s streets in this way. A little over half of them were eventually released. Another report found that between March and July, the state government “evacuated” over 400 “lunatics” and beggars from the city.
The Nigerian example raises some important issues in the South Asian context, where begging is just as prevalent. According to the Guardian, there are now more than 400,000 beggars in India, and 40,000 in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, alone. While there are no fixed numbers for how many beggars are plying the streets of Pakistan, it can be assumed that the figure is just as daunting, and increasing every day.