Editors Comments:
Getting really fed up with beggars at Bali's intersections.
Lately there is a disturbing trend of almost a 200 to 500% increase of beggars at Bali 's Intersections as young as five years old all the way up to 70-year-old.
As soon as they see the the white guy in the big car they are all over us.
What really disturbs me lately is a lot of them are young children 5 to 8-year-olds running around in busy traffic on the bypass with no adult supervision whatsoever.
At first the tendency is to feel sorry for them, and I do sincerely.
But giving cash to these especially very young children only encourage them to go home tell their friends and bring them back the next day.
Those of us who have lived in Bali as long as I have for the past 23 years are well aware that most intersection begging is organized by professional beggars.
Most of the young women carrying toddlers in their arms while begging is organized by factions from other islands particularly Java.
I think is important that the police take serious action as they have in the article below to start eliminating these beggars first and foremost for their own safety especially the very young children.
What's it going to take? One of these you youngsters to get run over to finally get serious.
Another important factor is when the international gates open up and tourists start coming in they will start taking pictures and post them on Facebook of the poverty in Bali which will certainly turn away other tourists in the future.
I hate to be harsh but it's a reality that the large percentage of these beggars are organized and not really beggars at all. Just trying to find some fast cash.
By Coconuts Bali Sep 27, 2021 | 4:37pm Bali time
Young men, dressed in traditional clothing, were caught busking in Denpasar over the weekend. Photo: Satpol PP Denpasar
Economic difficulties amid the COVID-19 pandemic have led young people to take up busking in the streets of Denpasar, as experts and lawmakers begin urging the government to address the issue.
Over the weekend, the Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) in Denpasar caught a couple of young men dressed in traditional Balinese clothing on an intersection in Denpasar. They carried a speaker with them and sang songs in Balinese, in one of the more recent examples of street performances in the provincial capital.
According to Gede Kamajaya, a sociologist from Udayana University, the buskers are popping up because of economic hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Their Balinese identity is their cultural capital to gain more sympathy and even add to their income,” Kamajaya said, while urging the government to establish schemes to support and empower the public.
Authorities have been sending these buskers to detention or back to their homes, which Kamajaya said is ineffective as it isn’t a solution to their problems.
“They are actually facing economic difficulties,” I Gusti Putu Budhiarta, a member of the Bali Regional Legislative Council (DPRD), also said.
“The people should be guided so they can be economically independent. From small businesses to entrepreneurial training, it could be very good if that can be done,” Budhiarta said, explaining that aid in the form of groceries that the government has been handing out are not sufficient.
Also Read — Bali economy shrank by 9.31 percent in 2020
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