The cabinet yesterday approved the draft vagrant and shelterless people (rehabilitation) act 2010 in an effort to rehabilitate street people, with provision for lifetime imprisonment or death penalty for forcing anyone into begging.
When passed, the law will also prevent theft, robbery, trafficking of women and children, and trading of drugs by vagrants.
The draft seeks to empower magistrates to declare those living in streets vagrants, and bring them at government shelter home.
“The main objective of the act is to provide shelter to the vagrants, not to arrest or punish them,” said Nasreen Begum, joint secretary of the law ministry.
According to the draft, the vagrants will stay at the shelter homes for two years and will be trained up for employment. Destitute children, mentally challenged people and prostitutes will also fall within the scope of the law.
To rehabilitate the vagrants, the government will build a vagrant centre in each of the country's 64 districts. There are six of them now that can shelter about 2,000 people.
The government moved to amend the Vagrancy Act, 1943 to rehabilitate the vagrants and beggars who are deprived of all fundamental rights, said Quomaran Nessa Khanam, secretary of social welfare.
The government found that most street people are involved in crimes like theft, robbery, mugging, trafficking and drug peddling.
“The government will also welcome private and non-government organisations' steps for setting up shelter homes, thus bringing a large number of vagrants in the country's mainstream development,” Enamul Haque Mostafa Shaheed, social welfare minister, told The Daily Star.
“We have taken the step to make the 67-year old Vagrancy Act time-befitting, and to ease suffering of the vagrants living in the open,” he said.
According to a government survey, there are about 12 lakh vagrants in the country, and the number of beggars and their dependants adds up to nearly one crore. The number of women vagrants comes to about 55 percent while the child vagrants are about four lakh.
Of them, 80 percent vagrants live in urban areas and the rest in rural areas, the survey of social service department says.
The amendment proposed cancellation of a provision granting indemnity to persons involved in the deaths of vagrants or any kind of unexpected incidents in the vagrant centres.
As per the existing law, vagrants are not allowed to leave the centre, but the proposed act calls for repeal of the provision.
The draft also proposes formation of an advisory board to look into the woes of the vagrants and also create a fund for their welfare. It also proposes special care to the pregnant vagrants and their infants.