With the arrival of Ramadan, the beggar mafia has entered the country's largest city, Karachi, and the influx continues in droves.

The city is famous throughout Pakistan for its generosity. Karachiites are at the forefront of helping in case of any accident or disaster in the country. The city also has the largest number of welfare institutions. The city also hosts the largest number of tables for the poor and needy every day. Since generosity increases more than usual during Ramadan, this month is a month of earning more money than reward for professional beggars.

Like every year, with the arrival of Ramadan, the beggar mafia has entered Karachi and professional beggars from different parts of the country have turned to the city. According to media reports, so far, about thirty thousands beggars have entered Karachi and in the last ten days of the Holy Month, the number is going to further increase. This  massive influx of professional beggars in the streets, markets, and footpaths of the city have become a nuisance for the dwellers of Karachi.

They have turned the Holy Month into a season of charity, which is a into a multi-million-rupee industry, while some are reportedly involved in criminal activities.They have become an extreme menace, occupying the main roads, railway stations, commercial plazas, and intersections, creating hurdles in movement for the pedestrians. Groups of beggars are present at every square, intersection and seem to be active in negative activities. Some beggar women hold small children so that seeing these innocent children, people give them more money in charity, but they also say that they have to buy milk for the child or food for the child. It is said that some of them are professional criminals and they break into people's houses and shops and steal valuables. During Eid and other festivals, their number increases significantly in the cities.  It is also a fact that due to rising inflation, beggars have set new begging rates by themselves.

They are now demanding currency notes instead of coins and currency notes are also bigger, they look down on those who give ten rupee notes.  There is an Anti-Beggar Act in the country, it is also in force, but those who are responsible for implementing this law seem to have failed miserably in its implementation that groups of beggars are appearing everywhere. Beggars are particularly prevalent in densely populated areas.  As a matter of  fact, the begging has turned into a mafia and an organized and strong network is working behind these beggers.  Under a regular network of professional beggars, different groups of beggars are assigned to different areas of the city and each group collects alms from people while remaining in their area for a fixed period. These people have adopted many tactics of begging. These people beg as lame and blind. 

Some appear to be unable to walk, lying in carriages or begging with the help of crutches. Some women hold pencils in their hands and appear to be selling pencils, but actually they are begging and their demand is not to buy pencils but to help. Some people are seen doing this work by holding a maswak  in their hands. The members of this network make their people stand in different places and ask for alms.

 Along with this, they are also being monitored, and these places are rented and each beggar has a specific place.  No other beggar can stand in his place and the hours of begging are also fixed. The beggar who earns the most in this  mafia group is posted in an equally posh area. If we talk about their earnings, professional beggars sitting on important places or highways earn thousands per day.  Due to non-implementation of laws for anti-begging, a large number of beggers are seen on roads, intersections and alleys.  Now there are many organized groups of them who leave different types of disabled persons to beg at different places and make them a source of income.  There have been incidents of the activities of these professional groups spreading abroad, which undermines our national dignity. The Punjab Cabinet's Standing Committee on Legislative has taken a commendable step by approving important amendments.  

According to the new amendment to the law, begging is a non-bailable offense and the organizer of the business is liable to a minimum of 7 and a maximum of 10 years in prison and the employer of 5 people for the purpose of begging to a minimum of shall be punished with three and maximum five years of imprisonment and a fine of three to five lakh rupees.  The law previously referred to a child beggar who was below 14 years of age. According to the new amendment, strict action will now be taken against the organizers of systematic begging and the masterminds of this racket are a stain on society.  In order to prevent them, it is inevitable to make strict laws in other provinces and federal level and to trace professional groups and give them severe punishments

. We would also like to draw attention to the fact that the beggars include a large number of drug addicts who should be caught and treated to make them useful citizens of the society.  Such training institutions should be established for such persons who beg due to theft of work where they can learn skills and earn decent livelihood.There are no authentic statistics about the number of these beggars, but according to a conservative estimate, the number of beggars in Pakistan is in lakhs.  Professional beggars use various tactics to show off their disability, neediness or illness.  But a negative aspect of this whole process is that the real entitled and white-collard section of the society is ignored.The people of Pakistan are among the countries in the world that actively participate in charity. Big anchors are established, but despite doing all this, the number of poverty and destitution and beggars is increasing day by day instead of decreasing.

According to socialists, begging is a social behavior in which the weak and downtrodden section of the society needs the help of others to meet their basic needs. That is, begging is the name of an activity born out of poverty and deprivation, in which money or charity is obtained by begging others.

Poverty, unemployment, disease, mental and physical disabilities, natural disasters and wars are commonly found to be causes of begging. Some people believe that poverty is the root cause of begging is to be eradicated, Poverty must be eradicated.  According to a survey, more than 70 million people in Pakistan are living below the poverty line, which is also a reason behind increasing number of beggars.