Saudi Gazette report RIYADH — An official at the Ministry of Social Affairs warned people against sympathizing with beggars. He said the ministry has detected that several of them are involved in supporting suspicious groups through the money they collect, Al-Eqtisadiah daily said in a recent report. Undersecretary for Social Care at the Ministry of Social Affairs Abdullah Al-Yusuf said the ministry warns citizens not to sympathize with beggars because there is a possibility that they are backed by clandestine groups. Col. Omar Al-Zallal, member of the Information Office at the Ministry of Interior, however, said the ministry has not detected or come across any case in which a beggar offered financial support to terrorist groups and termed talk about beggars collecting money to support suspicious groups as “unverified reports.” Director of the Anti-beggary Administration in the Ministry of Social Affairs Yusuf Al-Sayyali said in an earlier interview with Al-Eqtisadiah that begging has negative impacts on society. It is feared that many beggars are part of organized gangs that exploit children, women and disabled persons. He added that they might use begging as a cover for trafficking drugs and carrying out immoral acts. “The number of foreign beggars in Saudi Arabia is increasing mainly because there is no deterrent regulation to stop them. The existence of a regulation to combat beggary will contribute to putting a limit to the spread of this phenomenon, especially since the anti-human trafficking regulation has penalties for exploitation of children, women and disabled persons,” he said. Al-Sayyali called on religious scholars to create awareness on the harms of begging and said the cooperation of mosque imams with anti-beggary teams to prevent people from begging in mosques will help curb the phenomenon.
