The Association of Barangay Councils in Dumaguete, headed by Buñao Barangay Captain Lionel Banogon, and the Children’s Bureau of the City Administrator’s Office, joined efforts to address the proliferation of mendicants in the city.

Program initiator Gemma Iso said an information and education campaign will be held in the 30 barangays of the city, since grassroots officials play an important role in addressing the problem as frontliners.

The City Social Welfare Office recently gathered almost a hundred Badjaos, street children, mendicants, and Aetas roaming around the city and begging for money, food and the like, for documentation and to lecture them on laws and ordinances.

After the lecture, they were released, and are now backed on the streets.

Iso said Dumaguete residents should refuse to give them money, so that the mendicants and street-children, Aetas and the Badjaos will not be dependent on alms.*JG

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