Lydie Polfer has requested that the police respond more quickly after revealing that she herself has been the victim of harassment.
The phenomenon is well known in Luxembourg City and has turned into “beggar tourism,” as Mireille Rahmé-Bley, president of the Luxembourg City Business Association (UCVL) described it in an interview with our colleagues from RTL Radio in September. Rahmé-Bley went on to say that there are “too many beggars” and that “it cannot be” that “people deliberately come to Luxembourg City from abroad to sit on every corner of the city.”
During the monthly city breakfast on Wednesday morning, Mayor of Luxembourg City Lydie Polfer acknowledged that “the issue of organised begging has become worse.”
-> Luxembourg City Business Association: ‘Too many beggars’ in city centre, says president
The mayor said that some beggars behave “in an unacceptable manner.” “They focus on their target group, which tend to be ladies and gentlemen of a certain age. They come and harass them and if they don’t give them something, they call them names,” she explained, adding “it really is harassment!”
Polfer herself fell victim to such harassment “four months ago, in the middle of the street” in her own capital, one evening “at around 10pm,” the mayor of Luxembourg City revealed. The encounter escalated to the point that the beggar “threw a whole box of popcorn in my face,” Polfer recalled, adding that she “immediately called the police.”
However, the mayor explained that begging is “difficult” to manage since “it encompasses several issues,” which are often multi-layered. Unlike the homeless or drug addicts, organised begging means that “these people are also victims of trafficking, and it is very difficult to help them.” This is because “some of the people involved in organised begging refuse any help” and even “any contact.”
As a result, the City’s street workers are unable to assist them or even provide them with a bed for the night.
As a result, they sleep in front of homes, houses, parks, and on church steps. The problem is worsening, yet the mayor considers it “unacceptable.” Especially since “it’s becoming a serious sanitary issue.” Polfer has recently submitted a large file of photos to the minister in charge “to show what they leave behind when they leave.”
The problem was also discussed two days earlier during a meeting with police representatives. According to the mayor, she has requested that the police “implement the new law that was passed in July, which now allows the police to evict beggars from public premises.” While officers “evict them every morning,” the municipality has now asked that officers “evict them as early as the evening.”
Determined to curb the phenomenon, with all the means available and above all the help of “other institutions such as Justice or Immigration,” Polfer acknowledged that for the strategy to work “the police still have to see it and the justice system has to punish them.”
