Bulgaria Capital City Sofia Plans Child Street Beggar Ban

The Mayor of Sofia has announced plans to remove child beggars from the streets of the Bulgarian capital. Photo by BGNES

Child beggars are to be banned from the streets of Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, from the middle of March.

Yordanka Fandakova, Mayor of Sofia, has announced on Tuesday the creation of a mobile task force to deal with street children in the city.

Nine teams, formed of representatives of various institutions, including the Interior Ministry, the Social Support Directorate and the Agency for Child Protection, are currently undergoing training for their imminent duties on the streets of the city.

The teams will patrol across the city, targeting in particular those areas where begging by children is concentrated.

"There is no register of the children in the streets," said Mina Vladimirova, the Director of Sofia's Social Activities department.

"Our work with the begging children will be on an individual basis," she said. "In those cases where families have the capacity, the family itself will be supported to tackle the problem. Children who are at risk and have no stable family environment will be housed in the four crisis centers of the municipality."

Children identified as coming from outside Sofia will be referred to the social services of their town of origin.

Yordanka Fandakova stressed that the municipality was unable to cope with this problem on its own, and therefore relied on collaboration with official institutions and the NGO sector.

"We are talking about continuous action, not a campaign. There may be be cases where the same child will be identified as begging several times," explained the Mayor.

Begging in public places is prohibited in the Ordinance of the Municipality of Sofia. Current penalties are between BGN 10 and BGN 50, but this has not deterred the growing numbers of children begging in the streets of the Bulgarian capital.

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