Oyo govt seeks support of residents on eradication of street begging

Oyo state government has called on the people of the state to support government in eradicating street begging and destitute in the state.

This was stated by the Commissioner for woman affairs and social inclusion, Alhaja Kafilat Olayiwola while engaging community leaders, to address the challenges of destitute around the street of the state.

Olayiwola said that government has realized that all it effort to eradicate street begging and destitute in Oyo state has been futile after providing place of respite for the destitute but still come back to their usual place.

She further hinted that government has now introduce community involvement and engagement to eradicate street begging in the state.

Olayiwola called on community leaders to collaborate with government to eradicate street begging and not destitute to be on the street.

She further stated that “We realized that all our efforts since all this days, they have been so stubborn anytime we moved them to the normal location in Akinyele within 24 hours they are back again.

“We now decided to use another strategy and the strategy we decided to use is community involvement and engagement.

“Any community we get to starting from Sabo, we went to see the leaders in Sabo the community leaders there and we told them that on behalf of the people of Oyo state we want them to support us and now we have involved them then we are going to see good result.

“We All intend to put a very big banner where we are going to put pictures of beggers and we put our red cross showing that we don’t want to see them there again.

“We were surprised that on the way to new Gbagi, we got a young man, it was supposed that he was a Yoruba man, an Ibadan boy that has a dane gun, when the Amotekun search his body we saw him with gun and he too sat with the beggars.

“We all have to put all hands together to ensure that we eradicate the street begging and not allowing destitute to be on the street.

“We have lot of dirty things they put on the street right now, we need to contact Ministry of Environment to go right there to pack all the rags and other dirty things they put along, she said.

In his remark, Mogaji Oderinlo warned all beggars in Mapo and it environ to evacuate themselves from the vicinity to make the place clean.

The community street engagement started in Sabo, Eleyele, Labo, Oje, Mapo Hill, Bodija, Gbagi Market and Iwo-Road