The number of traditional beggars in Metro Manila is now outnumbered by modern mendicants who usually move from place to place and use different techniques in asking for alms. Commuters should be familiar with the latter as they are the targets of such tramps.

There was a time when children beggars in tandem or solo would board public jeepneys and buses and put a small white or brown envelope in each seated passenger’s lap. The kid would then speak, asking for money to buy food and there would be samaritans who would insert coins or bills inside the envelope. Sometimes, such very young beggar would just wait for a minute or two after distributing the envelopes without saying anything before collecting them and jumping off the moving vehicles to board another jeepney or bus and do the same thing again.

Another version is boy beggars would sing a song to passengers after passing around the small envelopes. The more equipped Badjao beggars with hair dyed blonde don’t sing but just sit on the entrance step of the jeepney and play music by tapping with their fingers improvised snare drums and blowing a micro whistle.

These beggars disguised as donation solicitors to probably circumvent the Anti-Mendicancy Law of 1978 are now facing tough competition from male teens in tandem who board jeepneys and announce that they are sorry to bother the passengers and assure them that they are not holduppers. The teens would show a laminated paper, perhaps a death or medical certificate and begin their alms pitch saying a family member is hospitalized or died and they need money to settle the medical or funeral bills they can’t pay because they are poor. Again there would be samaritans who would hand the boys cash donations.

On public buses, seldom are such young “solicitors” encountered. Instead, there are the religious preachers who also distribute donation envelopes to each passenger, greet and wish them safe travel, introduce themselves as a representative of a never-heard sect and then recite and expound on Bible verses. After their priestly performance, these men in casual attire then collect the envelopes, say thanks and praise donors before disembarking to board the next bus. Lately, more enterprising “preachers” are boarding LRT trains where more passengers can be targeted for solicitation.

There are other modern mendicants around like the mother-and-child tandems who usually appear every 15th and 30th or 31st day of the month on busy sidewalks and ask passersby for fare so they can get home. There are the blind-and-companion tandems who would tap on the windows of private cars and cabs on the road waiting for the red traffic light to turn green, hoping that the passenger inside would pity them and give money.

Commuters will unlikely miss encountering these beggars or solicitors who do the same thing everyday. The boys claiming a relative is sick or dead have laminated medical or death certificates so the paper won’t tear easily as it will be used over and over again. If their claims were true, either the body of their grandmother would be in an unending wake or forever hospitalized. Of course, the commuter will not bother to validate the laminated paper or visit their house to verify their dead.

As the yearend holiday season approaches, commuters should expect boys singing Christmas carols to be the ones passing around donation envelopes. Commuters may not mind them and authorities who are supposed to enforce the Anti-Mendicancy Law may not bother to verify if the other solicitors are legitimate and not mendicants.

It’s not wrong when poor people sometimes ask for money from anyone during an emergency or tragedy if what they claim were really true. But if these are con boys and fake solicitors preying on others, that is swindling punishable under the Revised Penal Code.

There are other ways to make money than soliciting cash donations from commuters using a scripted story line. Mayors may shoulder funeral fees while a PhilHealth or the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office can cover hospitalization expenses. Even better, they should get a job.