Saudis make up 33 percent Pilgrims dismayed at fake handicapsRIYADH/MAKKAH: Over 59,500 beggars have been arrested in Riyadh this year, most of them foreigners living in the Kingdom illegally, a Riyadh police report stated. The report said that 67 percent of the arrested were foreigners; 59 percent of the total was male, and children constituted 16 percent of beggars detained. The statement said that Saudis – 33 percent of the 59,500 – were referred to the Ministry of Social Affairs to check their financial and social backgrounds, while foreigners were handled by the relevant authorities ahead of deportation. Ibrahim Al-Samba', a professor of Social Studies at King Saud University, told Al-Hayat daily Friday that the public's willingness to give to beggars was exacerbating the problem, which he attributed in part to high costs of living and poverty. “Charities are doing what they can, but unfortunately it's not enough to cope with the numbers we're talking about,” he said. “The part played by mosque imams also needs to be improved.” Al-Madina newspaper, meanwhile, reported pilgrims' dismay at the number of beggars in Makkah. “I never imagined there'd be that many,” one Saudi pilgrim was reported as saying. “Most of them fake their handicaps as well. They fold their arms behind their backs and then cover over their elbows to make people think they've lost their arms in wars in their home countries. They're abusing the goodwill of pilgrims and making a lot of money out of them.” A pilgrim from Egypt said he was taken in at first, and was encouraged to give them money by his sympathetic family. “There were so many of them though that I started to wonder about their handicaps,” he said. “I asked one girl to show me her hands which she had supposedly lost, and she got up, removed the cloth and revealed two perfectly healthy hands.” A Makkah Mayoralty official told Al-Madina that the Mayor's Office “can't deal with the problem on its own”. “It requires backing from other official bodies,” he said. “The problem becomes more acute in the Haj season when beggars can be found across the city, and we need a complete unit from all government authorities to address the problem both in pilgrimage seasons and the rest of the year.”
