The government has created a plan to clear around 1,800 “vagabonds” each year from the streets of Phnom Penh and two other urban centers and send them to facilities for mandatory vocational training, Ministry of Social Affairs officials said Tuesday.
The Council of Ministers on Friday adopted a sub-decree creating the National Committee for Resolving the Vagabond Issue, aimed at improving the way Cambodia deals with destitute people.
The committee is headed by the minister of social affairs and is designed to help reintegrate the destitute into society, said Haul Phal, deputy director of the Ministry of Social Affairs’ Social Welfare Department. He added that the committee should be running by the year’s end.
The government hopes the committee will be able to remove from the streets 1,000 beggars and homeless in Phnom Penh, 500 in Siem Reap and 300 in Sihanoukville each year.
“Samdech Prime Minister Hun Sen pays a very high focus on resolving the vagabond issue, because we want to help alleviate people’s poverty,” Haul Phal said.
Haul Phal explained that beggars could be held at training centers for up to three months, and would then be reintegrated into their communities with the help of social workers.
He said that subcommittees would soon be set up in the provinces and municipalities to help with the project.
Daun Penh district Vice Governor Pich Socheata said Phnom Penh is already implementing its own version of the plan, and confirmed that police and other officials already have the authority to detain beggars.
“We need to set our city free of drug addicts, homeless persons and beggars, which is why we collect them to stay at the center for training to get proper skills,” she said. “When those beggars and homeless persons have proper skills, they will stop begging and return to their homeland to earn money legally.”
She added that the majority of beggars and homeless people were happy to stay at the Phnom Penh Municipal Social Affairs Center near Phnom Penh International Airport to receive training.
But some of those who were working the streets of Phnom Penh disagreed.
Many have changed their tactics to evade detention, leaving tourist areas and taking their pleas door-to-door in residential neighborhoods, following a roundup of more than 50 beggars, drug users and homeless people in Daun Penh district earlier this month.
“I started begging for money along residential houses, from door to door, for more than two weeks after a crowd of beggars was rounded up and detained at a center,” said Chan Neang, 13, whose family was detained last year during the Water Festival.
“I could earn only a little money from begging along residential streets…. But it is safer than begging for money along the riverside, because I could be arrested or detained any time,” she said.
Cheat Mao, 11, was panhandling on Street 146 in Tuol Kok district on Tuesday, though he said he could earn twice as much along Sisowath Quay.
He said he feared being sent to a detention center like the one his family was held at last year.
“My parents and my younger sisters tried many times to run from the center when they were rounded up last year, but they could not,” he said.
Child advocacy groups also raised concerns about the practice. “Children have their own right to earn money to support their lives,” Save the Children Norway Information Manager Sou Sophoannara said.
“Therefore the municipality must provide them enough food and good shelter, otherwise they abuse the children’s rights.”