New rehab scheme aims to get beggars off streets, gives them health insurance

The measures will include a range of basic services such as shelter, hygiene, food, clothing, bedding, medical facilities, counselling and education

Beggars and vagrants across 75 civic bodies will soon be given health insurance and rehabilitation benefits, with an aim to get them off the streets. The Union ministry of social justice and empowerment will launch the scheme from Delhi this Sunday.

Other benefits planned include a survey of beggars in these localities and the ministry will also start a system to identify them. Additionally, to promote livelihood options for them, the ministry is working on a series of skill development courses.

The scheme, a ministry official said, will be launched by Union minister Virendra Kumar from a shelter home at the Nizamuddin Metro station at Delhi’s Sarai Kale Khan on Sunday.

“We are working out ways of attracting them to our rehabilitation centres. Apart from this, the main challenge is to ensure that they continue in these centres,” a senior official of the ministry said.

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Rehabilitation measures, the official said, will include a range of basic services such as shelter, hygiene, food, clothing, bedding, medical facilities, counselling and education.

In the identification programme, the beggars will be identified on parameters such as their gender, age, whether they are orphans or in conflict with the law, if they are into substance abuse, whether they have disability or physical health as well as mental health issues. Apart from their geographical locations will also be determined. Those with drug issues will be sent to de-addiction centres.

In reply to a question in the Parliament in March 2021, the Centre said that there are as many as 4,13,670 beggars in India on the basis of the 2011 Census; this includes 2,21,673 male beggars and 1,91,997 female beggars.

The government had earlier implemented the Central Sector Scheme for Beggary Prevention from 1992-93 to 1997-98 to provide care, treatment and rehabilitation of beggars, and financial assistance for establishing work centres in the existing shelter homes for vocational training and technical education. But in 1998-99 the scheme was discontinued due to lesser demand from the state governments and UTs.