Kano – Some street beggars in Kano on Saturday called on the state government to assist them in their efforts at quitting begging.
They spoke in Kano, pleading with appropriate authorities in the state to provide means of livelihood for them to sustain their family.
Malam Badamasi Bilya, one of them said: “I travel on a weekly basis from Wudil, a local government in Kano to Kano city, to find money to feed my large family and my aged parents’’.
Habiba Audu, a female beggar, said her husband died while nobody supported her financially with her five children and, therefore, resorted to begging.
Another young beggar, Usman Baba, explained that he went to Saudi Arabia to beg for alms but was deported by the Saudi authorities.
“I cannot survive without begging because I don’t have a skill or capital to start a business.
“My friends say the state government provides generators, tables, chairs and an amount of money for beggars to start phone-charging business.
“But it is better if the government can take me somewhere to learn a skill than to give me a generator because if I am given, I will sell it,’’ Baba said.
In spite of the state government’s ban on street begging in Kano early this year, many beggars are still seen on some major roads.
Some of the beggars claimed that they had no option than to return to begging because they had no business that could keep them off the streets as beggars.