Police on the tourist island of Koh Phangan arrested a Russian man for visa overstay after he was detained by local police for begging for money for food from locals and tourists. The man had been overstaying his visa for more than four years.

On Monday, tourist police said that 56-year-old Dmitri Babaitsev was found sleeping in front of the Koh Phangan branch of the Banana IT store. He told police that he had both Russian and Canadian nationalist and that he had used his Russian passport enter Thailand.

An immigration check showed that he entered Thailand on a 30-day tourists visa on February 19, 2020, He was 1599 days past the end of his visa. He was taken to the Immigration office in Koh Phangan then transported to the Bangkok Immigration detention center for processing, extradition and blacklisting from the Kingdom for 5 years.

Meanwhile, Thailand’s Ministry of Social Development and Human Security has launched a campaign to stop people from giving money to beggars after a recent study of cities across the country showed that the number of beggars has increased since the pandemic.

The ministry plans to hand out pamphlets written in Thai, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Cambodian to make people more aware of the growing problem of beggars and how giving them money only enables them. The campaign also wants to change the way people think when giving money to beggars.

People often feel sorry for people who are disabled or act like they are disabled. Additionally, Thai people think that showing kindness is a good way to gain merit. According to the ministry this way of thinking only makes the problem worse, as a lot of beggars end up being sold or hired to do illegal activities before being arrested.

Most of the beggars are in Bangkok and top vacation spots like Chon Buri, Pattaya, Chiang Mai, Phuket, and Lop Buri.