This is something weird.
We mean the order of the Director of the Davao City Police Office (DCPO) to file charges against mendicants and those who give the beggars alms. Such an order is clearly dehumanizing the law to the point that those who feel compassion for their fellow human beings deprived of the needs for survival are being treated as like any other criminals roaming around the city.
Yes, many among us long for the day when city streets will be rid of people knocking on car windows or waiting for the traffic signal lights to turn red so they can rush to stopping motorists and extend their open palms begging for whatever that potential benefactors can share.
However, we feel that by directly adopting the police solution to the problem is far from the ideal approach that should be taken to put a stop to mendicancy.
Say, if the local government is indeed serious in stopping mendicancy in the city why cannot it look into the causes of the proliferation of mendicants? If the local authorities find the cause, why not come up with possible interventions to eradicate the problem starting at its very roots?
We have no doubt that if studies are to be made – as likely there is already one, two or three being done – it all boils down to extreme poverty that forces some people to go to the streets to beg for help.
There are reports though, that the proliferation of mendicants is now a lucrative business by scheming individuals who created syndicates to run begging as a means of generating money. Without doubt the police know that and it should be their areas of concern finding the syndicate leaders and run after them instead of directly focusing their attention in filing cases against the mendicants and the generous citizens of the city.
The police, we believe, should first let the local government authorities exhaust all the means within their power to come up with programs and projects that will uplift the lives of mendicants and those who are likely to morph into such life of begging. And we are certain that for a city like Davao that hardly had any indebtedness to financing institutions and with such huge potential income amounting to billions of pesos, implementing such programs and projects for the extremely disadvantaged “is not a punch on the face of the moon.”
It is just unfortunate that no one from among city officials has thought of initiatives that would lead to the deliverance of the mendicants from their present social state.
Meanwhile, if such intervention from the local government is already in place and there are no signs of change in mendicant-plenty city landscape, then it is now the appropriate time for the police to institute the so-called “police solution.” But arresting and filing charges against both the mendicants and the givers of alms should be the last of the police priorities.
They should instead look into the claims of the syndicates’ existence and the role they play in the increasing number of mendicants. The police must endeavor to validate the report and if proven true they have to dismantle the syndicate/s and file the necessary charges against those who are running them.
Once done and there is still no reduction in the number of street beggars in the city, then it is now the time for the police to run after the violators of the Anti-Mendicancy Law be they the mendicants themselves or the generous givers.
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Remember the Department of Education order for the taking out of the word “Dictator” in a phrase used to describe the elder Marcos reign written in the various learning materials used by the country’s educational system not so long ago?
Many thought of it as the beginning of the efforts of the present administration to “re-write history.” We did not give much thought about it as many of those who were first to make such comment were known aligned with the opposition and other anti-Marcos Jr. as tenant of Malacanang.
But of late a friend of ours called our attention on the non-declaration by Malacanang of the EDSA People Power Revolt anniversary as a regular holiday for 2024, or even a special non-working day just because the date falls on a Sunday.
Our friend told us that he would not be surprised if the EDSA event will soon pass into oblivion.
Indeed history is about to be re-written as certain events and even names are cleansed from documented records. But will the events in our recent history ever be erased from what has been recorded in the people’s minds and which had been successfully passed on to the baby boomers’ generation and perhaps to the immediate generations after them?
