TO CURB mendicancy in the streets, the Fuente Police Station rescued 39 individuals, including minors, last Saturday night.
Senior Insp. Hugo Ipong, head of the station, told Sun.Star Cebu that the round-up was a response to the public’s call to help the street children.
“They beg for money and do caroling, which is not allowed,” he said.
Cebu City Ordinance 1631 or the Anti-Mendicancy Ordinance “prohibits and penalizes the giving to and soliciting by mendicants of cash or material goods in public places, buildings and offices as well as in any business or commercial establishment.”
Ipong also said they received text messages from concerned citizens about street children sniffing rugby in the streets.
He said their operation was conducted in coordination with the different barangays under his area and the Department of Social Welfare and Development 7.
Some of the children have their parents by their side and the Fuente chief advised them to watch over their kids.
“We told them they are responsible for their children and we’ll find a way to keep them off the streets,” he said.
The mendicants were picked up from the sidewalks, skywalks or overpasses and in the areas near the malls.
Victor Gajudo and six of his relatives, who hails from Barangay Mambaling, said they purposely stayed in the Fuente area to earn money.
Gajudo said that he scavenges for plastic bottles left in the streets at night.
“We go to Fuente to collect bottles and sell them. We just sleep in the roadside but since there’s a storm now, we are forced to go home,” he told Sun.Star Cebu in Cebuano.
The Women and Children’s Protection Desk (WCPD) facilitated the profiling of the children who were rescued like Ana (real name withheld).
When asked for the name of her father, Ana said that she doesn’t have a father and prefers to live in the streets than in their home.
“Dugay naman ko walay papa. (It has been a long time that I don’t have a father),” she said.
The girl also smelled of rugby and was immediately warned by the WCPD personnel to stop using it for her own health.
The children and the adults were eventually released and were brought to their respective barangays.
Ipong said they will do the round up more often to ensure that the street dwellers will learn that they are at risk whenever they are in the road.
He also advised the public to refrain from giving them money to discourage them from begging.