Police and other concerned city government agencies will do daily rescues of beggars and mentally-challenged persons loitering Cebu City’s streets. | CDN File Photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Policemen and concerned city government agencies in Cebu City will now do daily rescues of mendicants and mentally-disturbed individuals loitering the city’s streets.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Janette Rafter, deputy city director for operations of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO), said that they changed their weekly schedules of doing rescues to doing this everyday as the answer to the appeal of some Carbon Market vendors for authorities to do something about the mendicants allegedly pestering and even allegedly threatening their customers.
Police: Reason for daily rescues
Rafter said that some Carbon Market vendors claimed that mendicants would just show up at their stalls and pester their customers, begging for alms, and they alleged that these mendicants would threaten or even hurt their customers if they would not give them cash.
“Actually nag-meeting na last week. Nakita man gud na mao lagi na ang isa ka mga problema. So karon atong solusyon, hopefully, with the coordination ug kanang kooperasyon sa tanan kining atong operation sa anti-mendicancy nahimo na gyud siyang daily,” Rafter said.
(Actually, we held a meeting last week. We saw that that really is one of the problems there. So now our solution, hopefully, with the coordination and cooperation of all, we’ll make this anti-mendicancy operation a daily thing.)
She said that the CCPO had also assigned on-standby policemen to assist the personnel of the Cebu City Anti-Mendicancy Board (CCAMB), in the rescue of these individuals.
However, she said that these rescues would only be done together with the personnel from the CCAMB and she emphasized that police could only assist the implementing city government personnel in the rescue.
Rafter also said that the city government were profiling these mendicants, and they were planning to house these people in a facility, which they had yet to consider.
The police officer, however, begged off to give further details about the planned facility.
Ban on giving of alms
Aside from doing rescues of mendicants, the CCPO earlier said that they were also ready to assist the CCAMB in implementing the ordinance banning the giving of alms to beggars or mendicants.
The CCPO said that the personnel from CCAMB would be the ones to apprehend violators while the police would assist them in the apprehension.
Last December, the Cebu City government strictly implemented the banning of mendicancy in public places.
This means that those begging for alms and those giving money to these beggars will be apprehended by the assigned personnel of the Cebu City government.
City Ordinance No.1631, prohibits and penalizes mendicancy in public places, buildings and offices, and in any business or commercial establishments.
Penalty for the violation will range from P1,000 or an equivalent of a four-hour community service.
The city government also warned then habitual offenders that they would file a complaint against these individuals.
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