DHAKA - Police in the Bangladeshi capital have cracked down on beggars, rounding them up and sending them outside the city after blaming them for worsening traffic congestion, officers said Wednesday.

Dhaka police chief A.H.M. Shahidul Haque said authorities have so far picked up 150 beggars since Tuesday, when they began getting tough with beggars.

Police launched the crackdown after the number of beggars increased in the city, Haque said, adding the beggars were delaying traffic at busy road crossings with their demands for money.

"Police picked them up and sent them outside Dhaka as the city's vagabond centres don't have any room to accommodate them," Haque said.

"The beggars halt traffic, force people to give money and disturb passers-by on busy roads," he said.

The round-up is part of a multi-pronged bid by authorities to ease traffic congestion in Dhaka that has dramatically worsened in the past few months.

Last year, the government enacted a law banning begging and made it punishable by a month in jail.

"We picked up 35 beggars yesterday and took them far away from the city on a truck and left them there," said Mahbubur Rahman, a police chief whose precinct includes Dhaka's main road, which leads to the prime minister's
residence.

Police say some beggars are recruited by organised gangs and forced to give a part of their takings to crime syndicates. Bangladesh has 700,000 beggars, with those in urban areas earning an average of 100 taka (S$2.03) a day, according to a 2005 study.

Bangladesh's anti-beggar law is aimed at eradicating begging within five years in one of the world's poorest countries, where nearly 40 percent of the 144-million population live on less than one dollar a day.

Social activists have slammed the round-up of beggars as draconian.

They say they beggars have nothing to do with the increase in traffic that they blame on rising number of cars and a lack of new roads.

"Rounding up beggars and deporting them outside capital is not a solution," said Sultana Kamal, head of the rights group Law and Litigation Centre.

"The government should create jobs for them or bring them under its social safety net. It cannot create a situation where a section of society is starved, she said.