vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #613 / Social life / Reading article...

With warm spring days coming, the number of beggars on Vladivostok streets is increasing -Uzbek and Moldavian gypsies place themselves in crowded areas asking for a donation, many of whom are underage.

The beggars can be seen near the railway station and central square, Fokina and Semyonovskaya Streets in downtown Vladivostok, near the popular shopping place of Lugovaya or the bus station in Vtoraya Rechka. They spend hours sitting on cold pavements or moving around their territory with an outstretched hand.

15-year-old Diana from Moldova said she arrived in Primorye with her family to live with their grandmother. Now the family, which numbers eight children, is living in the settlement of Razdolnoye in a small trailer, which became their permanent place of residence.

“My mother died and my grandmother is ill and spends most of her time in bed,” Diana shared. “We feed on the vegetables from our garden and on what people give for our begging – it is enough for cereals, salt, tea and sugar,” she said. “It is time for me to receive identification documents, so I am collecting money for the passport,” the girl added.

Sitting on dirty stairs, she has an orthodox icon on her lap, which helps attract attention and raise a feeling of compassion for the begging girl. Many Vladivostok residents do not pass without giving them coins and banknotes which quickly disappear in the children’s hands.

Diana and her 7-year-old brother, Yuri, are sitting in the company of another girl, 12-year-old Kristina. She was happy to receive money from me and hid it at once.

She said she would love to go to school but had to beg in the streets instead because her family has many children to feed.



At this point our dialogue was interrupted by another beggar, Yekaterina, who evidently showed her displeasure at children speaking with me and mentioned that the children do not have spare time to talk and need to work.

“The police patrols regularly take Tajik and Uzbek beggars with children to the police stations, but language barriers and a lack of documents make the police helpless to deal with such situations. Police can not file a report and start a case,” said Yelena Shevtsova, head of the department to deal with the underage children in Vladivostok’s Leninsky Department for Inner Affairs.

“Gypsies begging with children cannot be prosecuted because we can not detain them in the city streets and take to special stations until all the circumstances of the case are determined,” Shevtsova commented.

Police efforts are limited to issuing rebukes to beggars, who soon after a regular reprimand return to the street to collect money.