The National Council for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD) in Kenya is calling for an immediate probe into the influx of beggars in Kenya.
The Council has indicated that the surge in the number of beggars, some of whom are suspected to originate from neighbouring countries, was a cause for concern.
NCPW Rift Valley Regional Director, Isaac Rogito, noted that various investigative and security agencies had already established that the beggars, who were mostly children were victims of part of an East African Community (EAC) syndicate of criminals, who traffic children to act as beggars in towns within the region, in order to benefit from the trade.
Rogito noted that most of them are trafficked into the country with the promise that they will make good money out of begging, but sadly the money they get ends up in the pockets of the traffickers.
Speaking at the Rift Valley Regional Commissioner’s plenary hall, the Director stated that individual Kenyans must become aware that the loose change they give the disabled beggars, is not going to do the beggars much good.
“The authorities must crack down on the gangs and repatriate, as humanely as is possible, all the foreign beggars to their countries,” he added.
Rogito was responding to concerns raised by Project Coordinator of the Disability Resource Information Center (DRIC), Josephine Mahinda, who indicated that Kenyan towns are now awash with beggars from as far as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia and Uganda.
Mahinda expressed regret that though the Kenyan government had put in place various initiatives to empower citizens living with disabilities, such as Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO), an Affirmative Action programme in Kenya to empower women, youth, and people with disabilities by giving them more opportunities to do business with the government, the gains were being eroded as the country is being overrun by disabled beggars from neighbouring countries.
The Coordinator told the meeting that was graced by National Government Administration Officials (NGAO), County Government officers, civil society groups and representatives of various security agencies that the situation was a disgrace as it not only erodes the dignity of hardworking Kenyan persons living with disabilities (PLWDs) but had also been turned into a human trafficking activity by some people.
“It is time as a country we said no to streets in our major towns becoming a playground for human trafficking gangs that flood Kenya with helpless foreign disabled victims, whose only duty is to emotionally extort money from well-meaning citizens,” she affirmed.
Mahinda claimed that foreign women and girl beggars are routinely raped ideally to impregnate them because a disabled, crawling mother on the streets on her backside attracts more public sympathy and therefore money.
The men and boys she added are regularly abused if they do not meet their daily targets.
“These ‘expatriate’ beggars need to be repatriated to their respective countries. The disabled children are routinely exposed to weather elements, hunger and denied access to education. It is sickening, reprehensive and unacceptable,” she observed.
Mahinda urged Kenyans to be wary that the money they give to beggars in the streets ends up in the hands of ruthless gangs and only encourages more miserable souls to be trafficked into the country.
A spot check by Kenya News Agency established that the minors, all with various forms of disabilities, are either placed at strategic places along Kenyatta Avenue, Oginga Odinga Road, Club Lane and Kanu Street among others or pushed in wheelchairs, soliciting for alms from traders and pedestrians.
The child beggars, some as young as six years, are poorly dressed by their handlers, subjecting them to vagaries of harsh weather.
Mahinda indicated that those behind the syndicate could be exploiting the loophole of the tedious process of taking back the minors to their country of origin.
“To send them home, they have to be arrested and taken to court as children in need of care and protection. Then the court in liaison with Children and Probation Departments may issue repatriation orders to the Officer Commanding Nakuru Police Station (OCS), who will house the children in the cells until necessary arrangements are made to transport them to their respective countries’ border crossing points,” the official explained.
She said the cost of repatriating them is borne by the Police Department.
“Whenever they are deported, they always sneak back into the country as soon as they can and relocate to other streets away from the ones they were arrested,” claimed Ms Mahinda.
The Project Coordinator pointed out that there is a cartel that runs the begging ring that mints thousands of shillings on a monthly basis and which supplies the streets with disabled people for the illicit "business”.
“Most of these child beggars in Nakuru have settled down in begging communes, renting adjacent houses in Kwa Ronda, Kaptembwa, Manyani, Mwariki and Lake View estates”, she noted.
According to Joab Odinga, who operates a tea kiosk along Oginga Odinga Road, the beggars are brought to the streets every morning and distributed to different locations.
Kenya News Agency’s numerous efforts to unearth some of the beggars’ minders hit a dead end.
When we inquired from 7-year-old boy on who had brought him to Kenyatta Avenue, he suddenly went quiet, turned his wheelchair the opposite direction and resorted to stoic silence effectively ending our interview.
The boy, who appeared nervous, eventually offered to return our donation of the Sh50 note that we had earlier given him and ‘allow him room’ to continue minding his business.
“It is a business by some people because the money these beggars are soliciting is not theirs. We also have very few local disabled children in the racket. The County Government in collaboration with the County Commissioner’s office and National Police Service has been rounding them up and presenting them to authorities for either repatriation or to be moved into refugee camps but they sneak back to the town,” Odinga stated.
Another 16-year-old beggar who operates outside the Nakuru Jamia Mosque said she was brought into the country in July 2022 via Namanga border by two men who duped her that begging business was lucrative in Kenya.
“They said that I would be getting a minimum of Sh25,000 every month just by begging on the streets. According to the plan, I was to be put up in a shelter for disabled people from Tanzania. The shelter turned out to be a dingy semi apartment structure with several single rooms where I had to pay rent from begging on the streets,” she said.
She added that in some cases child beggars are subjected to physical violence if they fail to achieve their daily collection targets.
Former Municipal Council of Nakuru civic leader, William Ating’a, noted that about seven years ago, Kenyan towns and cities were virtually free of disabled beggars.
“Kenyans and their government had, over the years, taken proactive steps to integrate persons with disability (PWDs) into the society through education, vocational training and economic empowerment,” Ating’a noted.
He explained that this culminated in the launch of the Cash Transfer for Persons with Severe Disabilities (PWSD) programme, formation of the National Council for Persons with Disability (NCPWD) and establishment of the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (Agpo) initiative.
Under Agpo, at least 30 per cent of government procurement is set aside for youth, women and PWDs to open business opportunities for these vulnerable groups.
The former civic leader added, “We are aware of the East Africa Community integration plan and Kenya’s presidential declaration that we ease movement and trade across our borders. The challenge is; these disabled people cannot be isolated in the policy. It becomes very hard to enact our own policies.”
“Kenya has embraced pan-Africanism, allowing visa-free travel into the country, this must not be mistaken to giving a carte blanche to cross-border criminal gangs to exploit and abuse the disabled”, he warned.
According to another source, Cyrus Musera, the beggars are always under deft surveillance by guides, who bring them early in the morning, offer them meals and wheel them back into the begging communes in the evenings.
Musera, who is a newspaper vendor along Geoffrey Kamau Way, said the guides constantly move the beggars from one point to another during the day.
“They wheel them to strategic locations as early as 6am. The guides, mostly young men aged between 12 and 17 years, are tasked by the bosses to bring beggars food later in the day, relocate the beggars from place to place during different times of the day and take them somewhere to rest, when the sun sets before returning them to streets in the evening,” said Mr Musera.
