PESHAWAR, July 25: Use of drugs is common among child beggars who are caught in the web of poverty in the absence of an effective rehabilitation programme. Child beggars aged 7-15 told this reporter that use of hashish and glue-sniffing, a kind of addiction, was common among them and they live on footpaths.
Zeeshan, 12, said his father had died and his mother left home, leaving him and his two brothers to stray on streets.
“(after the death of my father) I started begging in Saddar bazaar and earned Rs150-200 a day. One day I returned home only to see that there was no one to receive me. Thereafter I started sleeping on footpaths in night and begging during daylight,” Zeeshan said, adding that he began using hashish because his street-friends also did so.
The provincial government had set up a welfare home, Daar-ul-Kafala, for boy beggars a year ago but could not make best of it because due to absence of an effective follow-up system, most of the children again indulge in drugs use after a short period of rehabilitation.
The welfare home, located on the Charsadda Road, can accommodate only 30 children at a time. Its staff claims to have, so far, registered more than 300 children only in the cantonment area.
Children at the welfare home said they indulge in drug use under the influence of their friends on the streets. They said they also indulge in time-pass activities like billiard, video games, gambling and watching movies full of violence with their earning through begging.
Inaamullah, 12, a resident of Zergarabad, said he enjoyed begging, watching Pashto movies and playing billiard but he mostly enjoyed drugs, particularly glue-sniffing.
Imran, 13, a resident of Yakatoot, said that he was a hashish addict. “I bring it from Karkhano market, Bara, for my personal use as well as for selling it here”, he said.
Officials concerned say that most of the child beggars are poor, homeless or orphans and after their treatment at the welfare home, they return to the environment they come from.
Beggar children are arrested under the West Pakistan Vagrancy Ordinance (1958) which makes beggary a bail-able offence. After their arrest, they are sent to the welfare home where the government provides them shelter, food, clothes and skilled training to rehabilitate them.
Daulat, 14, kept at the welfare home, said that his father married another woman and he and his mother were forced out of home.
“I did not know what to do, so I started begging near Peshawar Club Chowk. I even acted as a handicapped child and people gave me more alms,” Daulat, who is learning tailoring at the welfare home, said.