Rise in street beggars

Aug 07, 2025 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – Amid the hustle and bustle this election season, there is another feature in Georgetown: the rise in homelessness and street beggars. Though buzzing with the energy of construction cranes, luxury hotels, and glass-fronted developments, beneath the glossy veneer, dozens of men and women sleep on the pavements each night on Regent Street and elsewhere. They are invisible to many, not least the politicians who are campaigning for their votes.

The oil-fueled boom has dramatically inflated the cost of living, nowadays basic food items like cooking oil, sugar, and plantains have more than doubled in price, while wages remain stagnant. Despite collecting more than US$7B in oil revenue since 2019, a growing number of individuals struggle just to survive- some have resorted to begging in the streets. On Regent Street, a casual conversation with some of the dwellers would reveal how some of them have been homeless for over a decade—many battling addiction and estranged from families.

Most insisted they had never been offered social support. The homeless are very close to us, daily. They are present in just about every place that is visited, traveled to and from, stopped at, and even avoided. With all the instinctive familiarity with and knowledge of the ways of the street, they direct their energies and presence to get there, be there and, sometimes, menace there. These would be growing individual and clustered presences of the homeless roaming the streets and alarming citizens, including fellow streetwalkers. Many citizens are fearful, especially the womenfolk, since they have to be watchful, on high alert. This is not the healthiest state of existence, when the routine affairs of life become so tormenting.

The apprehensions over being victims of violent crime that could lurk anywhere are further intensified by the wretched brethren, who make the naked street their home. They could be menacing presences sometimes, where ‘no’ or silence or simply ignoring or going along one’s way may not be the safest of situations. For anyone of those hurried responses offered in the mildest of tones could trigger a range of trouble, which includes the abusive, the vulgar, the intimidating, and ultimately unnerving.

These fallen fellow citizens have nothing to lose. Some have already lost to the demands of life, whether it was lived here or overseas. In terms of the latter, more than a few are involuntary returnees, who have missed out the grand chance that many crave for, are doomed to, or have settled for – an existence on the street that hurtles ever downward.

The spike in homelessness and street begging is not a backdrop to Guyana’s prosperity—it’s a symptom. While oil wealth expands the elite’s skyline, hunger and desperation endure in Georgetown’s gutters. True progress demands more than construction milestones, it requires restoring dignity to every citizen. Oil wealth must serve not just luxury labels and foreign investors, but light ways out of poverty for the most vulnerable among us.

Anything less is a failed promise. Oil was meant to pull Guyana out of poverty. Instead, it is now a moral indictment: street beggars and homeless families, nestled against the rising skyline, reminding us what’s missing. A living wage; social services; affordable housing; outreach to those sleeping on cardboard. As this country heads into another defining elections, the decisions made today will determine whether the country becomes a beacon of inclusive development or a cautionary tale of missed opportunity. The plight of the homeless and those begging in the streets is a failure of policy, vision, and will. Guyana has the means to end this. The question is whether its leaders have the courage and the political will.

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Editorial, Elections, HOMELESSNESS, rise, Street beggars, vagrants

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