Beggars pulled off Dakar streets
2010-08-30 21:26
Dakar - Senegalese police arrested over 100 beggars in the capital Dakar over the weekend after a government ban on street begging, a police source said on Monday.
"Currently we have arrested 114 beggars in Dakar, including foreigners," the police source said on condition of anonymity, adding there were at least 24 Malians, two Guineans and a Gambian among those arrested.
"A major operation will take place today," (Monday) he added.
Beggars, the old, disabled, and scores in wheelchairs, are a familiar site on Dakar's streets, but were hardly visible in the centre on Monday morning.
"They (police) came and arrested many of us. They did it without brutality and took them" to a police station in Dakar, a beggar told AFP on Sunday.
Begging 'forbidden'
The Senegalese police are rounding up the beggars following the application of a government decision taken on August 23 to ban begging on public streets, allowing them to seek charity only at places of worship.
"In the next few days, the government will begin an effective battle against begging, which is forbidden," Prime Minister Souleymane Ndene Ndiaye said last week.
The number of beggars has grown in Dakar with more and more 'down and outs', and particularly young "talibes" (Muslim school students) between two and 17 years old present in large numbers in the streets.
In April, Human Rights Watch condemned the situation in Senegal where "tens of thousands of children" suffered "slave-like conditions" under brutal religious schoolteachers who forced them to beg.
Unicef estimated two years ago that 8 000 children lived on the streets of Dakar.