It may be up to local residents to get aggressive beggars off the streets of the City of Hamilton, according to Corporation of Hamilton secretary Roger Sherratt.

Mr. Sherratt discussed the issue, which made headlines recently when it was suggested the Corporation was looking into an order to ban panhandlers from roaming the city's streets, with Hamilton Rotarians on Tuesday.

"We've got all kinds of ideas," he said, adding that while he felt it premature to go into too much detail, he had just two hours previously left a meeting with officials - including Police - regarding what approaches the Corporation could take.

Mr. Sherratt said he recently contacted the English city of Nottingham's council, which passed a similar order banning beggars from the streets.

While he did not reveal the results of that contact, he said a reporter from Nottingham called him later to ask if he was joking.

"You only have three or four beggars and you think you have a problem?" the reporter said to Mr. Sherratt.

"But we do have them and they do target visitors," said the secretary. "And if we continue to allow them to victimise people we will have a really serious problem."

Rotarians suggested ideas such as offering the panhandlers jobs. However Mr. Sherratt replied with a story about a lawyer who suggested to him one day that they offer one man in particular a job cleaning the city parks.

As Mr. Sherratt pointed out to the lawyer, the particular man in question had been banned from the city parks for indecent assaults.

"We might be sued for hiring someone we know attacks women," he said.

Food vouchers were also suggested as an alternative to giving cash to beggars. However Mr. Sherratt said asking visitors to buy such vouchers as protection against beggars was a sad state of affairs.

The beggars normally do not want food anyway, he added. "I once offered to take one to the Spot ... He told me he didn't like the cuisine at the Spot!

"At least three of the active beggars in Hamilton are using the money they make begging for drugs or alcohol."

And beggars in Bermuda can be very aggressive, Rotarians observed. One man said that beggars such as six-foot-four Jinx Darrell were "equal to 50 of (Nottingham's) beggars.

"Beggars in cities abroad are usually fairly polite," he said. "(Jinx) puts the fear of God into people. He is causing unbelievable damage ... It's embarrassing to me as a Bermudian."

Mr. Sherratt agreed, adding that even convictions from Magistrates' Court do not seem to be stopping Mr. Darrell.

That observation raised the issue of Police complacency, with another Rotarian saying he had witnessed Police doing nothing about beggars who they believed were causing no harm.

"In particular with physical assaults, we encourage the complainant to go to the Police and the courts," said Mr. Sherratt.

"We can't depend on visitors to do that - we have to take care of that ourselves."