Questionable alms collectors

Questionable alms collectors

From Media Indonesia

I am concerned by the increasing number of door-to-door
collectors of donations who usually claim to act on behalf of
certain foundations whose legality is not clear and whose
location is only God knows where. Many of them are very insistent
and resort to a variety of ways to gain the attention of the
occupants of a house they happen to visit: from tapping on the
fence with a coin to shouting a greeting in a very impolite tone.
The trouble is that we cannot verify whether the collection is
genuine because the address given -- often without a telephone
number -- is usually somewhere far away.

At first I, though unwilling, often used to give money to them
as I took pity on their appearance and was sometimes touched by
their polite requests. However, something that happened to me a
while ago has made me think many times before deciding to give
anything to these donation collectors.

One day I was at my mother's house when one such collector
came and tapped the fence with a coin. As I was then typing, I
asked my mother's maid to see him and ask what he wanted. When
the door was opened and he saw me sitting before my computer, he
shouted to me, "Donation, ma'am." My mother's maid told him that
the woman owner of the house was out but this man kept on
shouting to me asking for a donation. Finally, as I was then too
busy to do anything else, I simply said, "Sorry, not this time,
Mas."

Then something I never would have expected happened. He said
to my mother's maid, "Tell her I hope she dies soon." I heard it
only indistinctly, but as soon as my mother's maid confirmed to
me that he had said exactly that, I rushed out and asked him what
he had just said. He spat before me, but because I then
threatened to call the neighborhood chief, he took to his heels.
Then I was told that before coming to my mother's house, he had
knocked hard on the fence of a neighbor. Well, it is just another
form of terrorization, isn't it?

I am really confused as to how to deal with such people. I
have also heard that some criminals pretend to be donation
collectors to case a house they make it their target. I'm
horrified just thinking about this.

I should apologize to donation collectors who are honest and
polite because the above may offend them. And to the authorities
responsible for social affairs, I would like to call on them to
think of a way to deal with this problem.

ELA

Tangerang, West Java