Cebu City welfare office deals with December, January influx of street beggars
A temporary shelter for street dwellers or beggars in Cebu City will be ready soon, said a city official.
“We have our own coming shelter in barangay Lorega. It’s a prefabricated shelter that can house more than 200 people. Hopefully, (materials) will arrive within the year and we can finish installing it by early January,” said Ester Concha, chief of the city government’s social welfare department.
For now, social workers will continue to go around “profiling” street dwellers, and assisting them in going back to their hometowns.
A sharp increase in the number of mendicants sleeping on the streets or roaming around Cebu City has alarmed authorities in recent weeks due to the holiday season that stretches until January for the Sinulog.
They are “new faces” in the locality, including entire families who loiter at the roadsides, said Tinago barangay captain Joel Garganera, whose village downtown gets a large share of them.
What surprised him was that many don’t speak Cebuano, making him wonder what provinces they come from.
DON’T GIVE ALMS
Giving alms is prohibited by a city ordinance but many people still give money out of pity or habit.
The practice is discouraged by Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman, who said it’s better for barangays or local governments to conduct activities for the poor in “activity centers” so that street children will not beg or carol on the streets or board jeepneys to solicit money.
“Through our campaign, ‘Tamang tulong ang kailangan, hindi ang pagbibigay ng limos sa lansangan,’ we encourage the public to give help in the proper way and right places, not on the streets because this will only reinforce the children’s beliefs that if they want gifts or money, they can go to the streets,” she said in the DSWD website.
In Cebu City, activities for street children are held in the Parian Drop-in Center and other charitable institutions, but there is no designated government site for them.
A P2.8-million budget from the DSWD will be made available to the Cebu city social welfare office for a six-month Comprehensive Program on Street Children, said Concha.
But while these are not yet in place, Concha said her staff will continue to “reach out” to night dwellers, “profile” them and arrange to send them back to their homes or provinces.
Concern about the presence of street dwellers and its impact on Cebu’s hosting of the International Eucharistic Congress was raised in a coordination meeting the other day.
Cebu Archdiocese officials said they do not favor rounding up street children and beggars since that would be contrary to the celebration of the Year of Mercy and Pope Francis’ appeal to show compassion for the poor.
One of the IEC’s main events is the First Holy Communion of about 500 street children who underwent catechism classes to prepare for it.
Rounding up street children and beggars to keep them out of public view during high-profile events like January’s papal visit and the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Manila has been criticized by various quarters as inhuman and an act of hypocrisy.
A suggestion to use the Devotee City, a cluster of container vans converted into dwellings for out-of-town pilgrims who come for the Sto. Niño fiesta was raised in Tuesday’s meeting at City Hall by Eugene Elizalde, head of the Police Advisory Coordinating Committee.
Concha, however, said the container vans were too “hot” to be used as dwellings for an extended occupancy.
The planned two-story Lorega shelter will be easy to install because it is made of prefabricated materials, she said. Expenses are already covered in the DSWS office’s budget for this year.
This is where street dwellers and children will be brought for “processing” and other “interventions” by social workers like feeding, personal sanitation, counseling and values formation.
For adults, skills training and job opportunities are other options.
In a separate interview, Acting Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella said the Devotee City should only be made available to real devotees who visit the city for the feast of Sr. Sto. Niño.
The container vans are set up a few days before the Sinulog and Fiesta Señor, then dismantled right after.
“It’s for devotees. But if their purpose of coming to the city is just to beg, to contribute to our social problems, then other programs should be undertaken to have them returned (to their hometowns). The Devotee City is for devotees,” he said.
Labella agreed that the increasing number of street dwellers was a cause for concern.
He said it happens every year during Christmas and Sinulog due to the “bazaar mentality” of people from far-flung places who come to Cebu City, attracted by the colorful and lively activities in the city, including the chance to earn money.
Labella said he would rather strengthen programs to prevent migrants from sleeping on the streets and returning them to their place of origin.
JANUARY TO JUNE
Concha said the joint program of the city social welfare office and DSWD-7 was supposed to be implemented from June to December this year but the signing of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was delayed and accomplished only this month.
“From the P3.6-million budget for the program, around P2.8 million can be downloaded for the city to use. We’ve been processing the documents for the program and, hopefully, by Monday, we can arrange the transfer of the funds,” she said.
The city social welfare office hopes to implement the project from January to June 2016.
The money will be used, among others, to pay for the salary of facilitators who help during outreach activities, and to assist family members finds jobs.
Concha said her staff can’t cope with the increasing number of mendicants in the city streets since they have other duties to attend to in their office.
“But even without the money we have already started with our street facilitation. We have some output,” Concha said.
She said her staff conducts daily roving and found out that some night dwellers are able-bodied but don’t want to go home or work.
Under the city’s Balik Probinsya program, the city can pay their bus or boat fare so they can return to their homes. But first, they have to sign a document signifying their commitment not to return to the city to loiter in the streets.
Concha said this program is being implemented by the City Legal Office.