HYDERABAD: After years of brouhaha on making Hyderabad a beggar-free city and even after Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy directing authorities in May this year to put a rehabilitation programme in place for beggars within three months, the district administration appears to have put the issue on the backburner.

Forget the rehabilitation programme, even the data available with the administration on the total number of beggars in the city is more than a year old.

According to a senior district administration official, there has been no progress on the project after the recent change in the district administration.

Project details

"No steps have been taken for beggars' rehabilitation after April. The issue is presently not on the priority list of the current administration," the official said.

This is the situation after former District Collector Arvind Kumar had initiated a survey and an ambitious rehabilitation project for beggars last year.

The idea was to provide beggars, especially the aged ones, night shelter in Government schools.

Hygienic living conditions and education to young urchins in was also part of the project.

As per a survey done in July-August last year, there are 10,466 beggars in the city. Of these, 5,814 are males, 4,613 females and 39 were eunuchs. The administration rehabilitated 3,049 beggars till April this year, including 1,621 male and 1,428 female beggars.

However, the project was kept in abeyance. After April, there has been no effort to ascertain how many remained in the rehabilitation centres or how many went back to the streets.

Beggar rehabilitation was a major issue for several previous governments and even when Teegala Krishna Reddy took over as Mayor in 2002, one of his first mission was to initiate their rehabilitation.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail