DEVELOPMENT-MOROCCO: Debate Over Policies to Assist Beggars

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nouri Zyad

MARRAKESH, Oct 15 2007 (IPS) - Morocco’s social development minister, Abderrahim Harrouchi, says efforts are underway to address the plight of thousands of beggars in the North African country.

“We have put in place a strategy based on three approaches: the first deals with the social aspect, the second with the legal aspect, and the third concerns communication,” he told IPS during a telephone interview.

“We are working with the aim of integrating the beggars in their families, where they have them; if not, we place them in social centres, in the charge of government.”

Small, income-generating projects are also offered to the beggars. “But the difficulty is that the beggars earn more by begging,” said Harrouchi.

An elderly female beggar who recently featured on one of Morocco’s national television stations was reported to own two houses and be on the point of buying a third in Casablanca, the economic capital. She also possessed the tidy sum of about 14,000 dollars, according to the television.

The minister’s comments follow the release late last month of a report about a governmental study that put the number of beggars in Morocco at 200,000. Some 62 percent of beggars were found to be “professionals” who often exploited the handicaps of other beggars, or of children whom they sometimes hired to beg during the day. The children were then given a share of the day’s takings.

In the capital, Rabat, and Casablanca, 80 percent of the beggars surveyed during the last six months were integrated in families, said Harrouchi – while 18 percent were lodged in social centres. Legal action was taken against certain repeat offenders.

However, civil society and political representatives believe government’s strategy is inadequate in the face of this growing problem, and that the figure of 200,000 is questionable.

“Government statistics still fall short of reality,” observes Mohamed El Ghafri, a member of the National Co-ordination to Fight Against Price Increases in Rabat.

Mohamed Nasreddine, assistant secretary general of the National Union of Retired Civil Servants, claims the number of beggars in Morocco is about a million, referring to other studies he did not elaborate on.

El Ghafri notes that the conservative economic policies Morocco’s government has pursued are problematic when it comes to dealing with beggars, adding that the state should “distance itself from the directives of international financial institutions and…re-assume its social responsibilities” in a bid to help the destitute.

The report says that time and concerted effort will be required to reduce the number of beggars on Moroccan streets, as well as strategies that take into account the multifaceted nature of the problem.

It further indicates that most of those who beg are women, some divorced and with children to support – some with husbands who are unable to work, laid off, or temporarily unemployed.

Fatima, in her fifties, is one such woman. She can be found each day before one of the main mosques in Marrakesh, Morocco’s second largest city.

“I have appealed to the generosity of people for some years already, after the sudden departure of my husband, to meet the daily expenses of my household, the school fees of my four children and the rent for our modest home,” she told IPS.

Asked whether she would accept a job as a servant, Fatima replied, without hesitating: “No! How do you think that the amount of 1,000 dirhams (about 120 dollars), in the best of cases, would enable me to pay all my expenses?”

But she added that if the schooling of her children was taken care of, she would “willingly accept the job of a domestic.”

The study, which surveyed 2,400 beggars from eight prefectures and provinces, further noted that 1.4 percent of respondents were retired civil servants.

“The officials who are pensioned off live in a terrible situation because of a miserable (retirement) system and obvious governmental disregard,” says Nasreddine, who is calling – in part – for this system to be thoroughly overhauled and pensions made tax free.

He also highlights the need to “provide the widows (of officials) with at least two-thirds” of the minimum wage. They currently receive 50 percent of the salary of their deceased husbands.