Vagrants

BEHIND THE SCENES
Alfred P. Dizon

BAGUIO CITY -- As the holiday season ushers and homeless people start flooding urban centers, local governments are also creating measures to drive these vagrants away.

As prescribed under Article 202 of the Revised Penal Code, vagrants are defined as “any person found loitering in public or semi-public buildings or places or trampling or wandering about the country or the streets without visible means of support; any idle or dissolute person who ledges in houses of ill fame; ruffians or pimps and those who habitually associate with prostitutes.”

Should government be harsh and drive them away or give them the support they need considering that they don’t have adequate means to earn a living?

True, they are eyesores and a strain in the eyes of “decent society.” Wearing tattered and dirty clothes, their smell is pronounced as they enter restaurants and beg for money or leftovers destroying appetites. The enterprising ones beg right on the streets. They are everywhere – on parks and other crowded areas appealing for pity bringing along their dirty month-old babies. Others scrounge for left-over food from garbage cans. They piss and defecate anywhere.

They are considered the dregs of society, but a little appraisal of their situation may be in order. Maybe, it is high time the law on vagrants should be reviewed and decriminalized considering most of these marginalized people left their faraway towns like those in Maguindanao to escape militarization, lawlessness, poverty and exploitation.

They have come to urban centers in hopes of finding better lives without fear of being killed by bandits or minions of corrupt and murderous officials.

Baguio city is not spared from vagrants. As the city ushers in the Christmas season and more tourists are starting to come up, law enforcement units have their hands full checking them.

This, considering that there are the “professional” pickpockets and thieves among them who even stab people to supplement their income. These are definitely the types who should be hauled to jail.

But the really poor vagrants should be treated with compassion and their plight studied so doable and responsive programs like those on livelihood could be made by the government in their behalf to uplift their living conditions. The

Department of Social Welfare and Development should be at the forefront of this considering that billions of pesos had been allotted to the agency for its programs.

We cannot entirely blame local officials for wanting to drive out these vagrants. In a recent meeting with local police officials, Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan made it clear that tourist spots and the central business district must be free of vagrants and mendicants.

Domogan said he does not want to receive reports of street dwellers sleeping underneath overpasses or sprawled on picnic spots and benches at Burnham Park.

If the local government cannot control vagrants and mendicants, he said, then the city’s Alay sa Kalinisan program, with which this mountain resort city prides itself for being at the forefront of the country’s clean and green program, will be useless.

He told police officials that he was displeased with the rising number of vagrants and mendicants, considering that visitors have reported encountering them sleeping on the steps of the overpasses.

To make things worse, Domogan said, when vagrants and mendicants leave the public spots where they slept, they leave a considerable amount of trash and even human waste behind.

Domogan had directed the police and the city Welfare office to intensify operations against these street dwellers.

“They (vagrants and mendicants) will be sent back to their places of origin the soonest before they loiter around the city and contribute to the city’s increasing volume of waste.”

Among the identified vagrants and mendicants were Badjaos from Mindanao and elder folk from the Cordillera. He appealed to families of vagrants and mendicants to prevent their relatives from coming to the city and beg so they will not contribute in destroying the image of the city as a prime tourist destination.

Domogan said many tourists have been dismayed over the bad attitude of most mendicants who insist they be given money even if people do not want to give them. Police and social welfare officials said they have apprehended and sent mendicants back to their places of origin but they came back and pursued their trade several days later.

Beggars love to do their trade in the city because local residents and tourists are reportedly generous. Some of them have reportedly been able to build their houses after several years of roaming around the city and begging from thousands of people.

So back to decriminalizing vagrancy. An email from Sen. Francis Escudero, chairman of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, said he had filed a bill to this effect. In removing the vagrant provision, Escudero said prostitution, however, shall continue to be punishable.

“Homeless people who are usually labeled as vagrants are more often than not victims of poverty and the lack of opportunities for employment. Thus decent standards of living and quality of life is inaccessible to them. This is what the law fails to see,” Escudero explained.

The senator said vagrancy causes little or no damage to society. “It is a minor infraction that is not motivated by malice but by some psychological disorders. It should therefore be addressed with treatment, rather than with punishment.”

The bill, Escudero said, provides equal protection to women, children and men as authorities cannot anymore recklessly and conveniently use vagrancy in arbitrary arrests.

“The current vagrancy act usually rounds up people who cannot really stand up for themselves. Decriminalization of vagrancy will give a more humane countenance on our justice system. The bill prioritizes the rehabilitation of the offender and acknowledges the value of every human life,” Escudero said.

Escudero added that once passed into law, SBN 2367 will also decongest the load of the justice system, allowing law enforcement people to pay more attention to graver offenses and improve administration of justice.