Beiruting News

A German city plans to get homeless drug addicts and alcoholics to clean the streets and pay them in beer, cigarettes, food and cash.

Project "Pick Up," set to begin Wednesday, will target the streets around the railroad station in the western city of Essen, Die Welt reported. The homeless laborers will earn $1.50 an hour and three bottles of beer per shift.

"The project participants are people who need to have a daily structure just to get back on their feet," said coordinator Oliver Balgar, according to Al Jazeera.

The program mimics one in Amsterdam where the homeless pick up trash with the goal of getting the worst alcoholics off the streets and productive. The Dutch city gives its laborers five beers, rolling tobacco, a hot lunch and $13, But the plan has critics.

"This is not about the human being, as officials claim," Horst Renner, who works at a nearby homeless center, told International Business Times. "The city wants to get the homeless out of public sight."

Organizers said Pick Up will be overseen by social workers and target the most hopeless cases: The unemployable, addicts and those suffering from mental or physical disabilities, Vice reported.

Laborers will work in four- to six-hour shifts, sweep streets and pick up trash. In addition to beer and cash, workers will get tobacco and a warm meal.