evidence: Claiming that there are reports of children and women being mostly used for begging, State Minister Geetha Kumarasinghe said steps will be taken to curb this practice. [...] During the discussion it was revealed that the use of children and women for begging has become a business as it is a common practice to hire children for begging, while some children are given drugs and used for begging, and women pretend to be pregnant. [...] The State Ministers directed the officials to take steps to obtain the relevant data on the beggars in this country through the survey of beggars to be carried out by the Department of Social Services in September.(Ajith Siriwardana and Yohan Perera)