KOTA KINABALU: Kota Kinabalu City Hall has rounded up 19 people during separate operations in the city centre this week to rid the city of the street begging menace.
According to enforcement director Abdul Mukti Haji Muchlish, those caught include a man in his 50s, believed to be one of the masterminds behind the street begging activities in the city.
The man was held in Kota Kinabalu Central Market on Thursday morning with four women in their 70s and 80s and a nine-year old boy. They are believed to be residing in Kampung Pondo, Pulau Gaya. Most of the street beggars found are the Palauh people from the district of Semporna.
Abdul Mukti added the Special Operations Division under the Enforcement Department also caught six children, four boys and two girls, aged between four and 12 years old, begging at the Centre Point-Asia City traffic light junction early this week.
City Hall has received numerous complaints that these beggars are becoming a hazard and nuisance to motorists when they knock on windshields of cars stopping at the traffic lights.
While in the city centre, Sinsuran and Api-Api, senior enforcement officer Superintendent Ernest Mojikon and his team also detained six beggars and a 30-year-old man found to be intoxicated with glue sniffing.
The detained beggars were a mother in her late 20s with two boys and a girl, aged between one to five years old, a woman in her 60s and an eight-year-old girl, he said.
Mukti said since early this year, the enforcement division had caught around 70 beggars in the city.
He added all the information gathered during these operations would be forwarded to the Welfare Department and the Ministry of Community Development and Consumer Affairs for their further action under the relevant laws such as Child Act and Destitute Persons Act.