The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCT) has evacuated 210 beggars, scavengers, including children from under bridges and other public places in the nation’s capital city.
The exercise yesterday by Operation Sweep Abuja Clean team was aimed ridding Abuja of destitute, traders and one-chance syndicate.
The Acting Director, Social Welfare, Social Department Secretariat (SDS), Mrs. Gloria Onwuka, said that a breakdown of those evacuated shows that there 58 women, 72 children and 80 men.
She said those evacuated so far were taken to the FCT Rehabilitation Centre in Bwari, where they would be profiled and evacuated to their identified states of origins.
Onwuka noted that due to outcry over nuisance and criminal activities, the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, directed officials of the department to step up arrest of destitute.
Onwuka said: “We have apprehended and evacuated 80 men since the commencement of the exercise, the women are 58 while the children are 72 in number. The exercise will continue until Abuja streets are free of beggars.
“Every day you receive complaints about one thing or the other, One-chance, kidnapping, all manner of evil things in FCT. So, the minister directed us to do away with all those things.
“Most of the beggars go even to the extent of hiring people’s children to come on the road and be begging. And there are families where they are hiring these children, we don’t even know that this is what they are using their children to do.
“They have taken it as a business. They will now go and hire people from other states, put them in vehicle, very early in the morning, they will come in Abuja and start begging. By evening or in the nighttime, they will disappear,” she said.
Also, the Director FCTA Security Services Department, Adamu Gwary said those apprehended were constituting a threat to the security of the residents.
“We want to believe that most of the people apprehended, they have constituted degrees of crime and other things in the nation’s capital.
“The security concern of most of these nuisances within the FCT have become a source of great worry to the residents.
“And the Minister has given that directive to the Commission of Police and all other relevant agencies to ensure that the FCT is rid the capital city of all these security threats.
“The operation has covered so far, the city center, Kubwa, Gwarimpa, Asokoro, Garki, Wuse and the rest. And the operation is expanding, because the minister’s concern is that every nook and cranny of the FCT that has any form of insecurity must be covered by this special joint task team,” Gwary said.
(This Day)
