NEW DELHI: The Centre is planning to launch a national campaign for rehabilitation of people engaged in begging in 10 places across the country. The campaign is likely to be launched in April.
This comes after the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment conducted a meeting with state representatives and NGOs on January 14 in the capital.
Based on the discussions in workshops, the states should prepare a national action plan consisting of initiatives and budget by March, a letter sent from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to states said.
In the first phase, the central government has proposed to launch the campaign in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Patna, Lucknow and Indore.
In each location, a detailed action plan would be prepared which would cover identification, rehabilitation, provision of medical facilities, counselling, education, skill development, and a ‘sustainable settlement’ of persons engaged in begging. The assessment would be carried out in which category a destitute falls in order to determine the scheme that she/he would fit into.
The Centre has proposed that the project would be funded on a 60:40 basis by the Centre and the state governments.
“The proposed programme is a progressive decision of the ministry. What remains to be seen is states’ response to this. Unfortunately, popular lens to view beggary is still flawed. This scheme is an opportunity to create a humane mechanism to address destitution,” said Mohammed Tarique, director, Koshish, a Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) field action project on homelessness and destitution.
The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has directed the states to nominate a nodal agency in the respective cities which have been selected for the national project. It has also asked the states to arrange for workshops comprising the stakeholders in the city in the first week of February.
“A time has come for preparing a national level action plan for declaring major cities begging-free through coordinated action of various stakeholders such as central and state governments, local bodies, and NGOs working in the field,” said the letter.