We did not know if the young girl was the mother of the baby or just from a poor family trying to collect a few more coins to supplement a meagre income.

I suddenly realised I had the wrong assumption that waitman had everything. There were poor and disadvantaged people everywhere in the world.

We gave the girl a few coins and walked away embarrassed. But a similar scene replayed itself for all the time I was in the UK.

There are many reasons why people, including children, turn to the streets. They include unemployment, alcoholism and lack of accommodation.

There are estimated to be two million Londoners who make their living from begging, government allowances, charity or theft.

At the time two charities were trying to raise half a million pounds for new hostels and backup services in the city.

To launch the program, TV star Esther Rantzen went to see poor people under a bridge in the Bullring at Waterloo. She talked with the 23-year old mother of three at the entrance to her shelter of broken crates.

“I am going to take a lot of help to give her and the other people here what they want – a home, a lifestyle and hope for the future,” Rantzen said.

Surrounded by makeshift cardboard panel, dirty blankets and worn-out sleeping bags, Rantzen chatted to long term residents in this cast-off society.

One of them, 21 year old Paddy who had lived there for seven years, explained: “Once there were only six or seven of us. Now there are 2,000 and there will be more in the summer.”

Rantzen is well known for her work with various charities including The Silver Line, designed to combat loneliness, which she set up in 2012.

Two years later on another continent, as I stood under the imposing Empire State Building in New York, a man came of from nowhere and started to sing words I could not understand. Nearby, seven people, apparently homeless, were sleeping peacefully on cardboard.

The man asked if he could sing again but this time he wanted some form of payment: a cigarette, maybe a few coins. I held out a two dollar note. My friends searched for coins in their pockets.

The man rattled off some more songs. It was fascinating how some street people provided entertainment so they did not take money from people for nothing.

The man thanked us and went back to sleep on his piece of cardboard with the Empire State Building towering over him.

In London and New York, it seemed like a bad dream to see these people lying around. The UK and the USA, two of the world’s most advanced countries, yet poor people lived on the streets.

But what about Papua New guinea, I thought? “Never!” I assured myself. “We have land to fall back on if a person loses his job or a student drops out of the education system.”

People must continue to own land like their ancestors have done. Land is a living soul, the lifeblood of an individual which must never be traded even for a billion bucks.

PNG does not yet have homeless beggars. The people, mostly handicapped, we see on the streets of Port Moresby, Lae and Mt Hagen with small signs are not really beggars. They can readily be looked after by relatives.

But steps must be taken now to ensure protection and help for the poor. If not our main towns could soon see degrading rows of outstretched hands seeking help from the society that put them there.

One of the striking sociological carry-over effects of traditional values and norms into urban areas is the wantok system prevalent in PNG.

Public officers are often accused of corrupt practises when they tend to give first preference to their relatives as opposed to being rational and treat everybody fairly.

While it is true wantokism is a hindrance to development, it does play a positive role particularly useful in urban settings. It is handy in situations where a wantok will not give cold stares, rude responses or ignore people who are in need. Wantokisim applied in the right situations is useful to society.

But what sort of a society will PNG have become if wantoks allow their kin to beg? Will the people have changed completely to ignore their own blood relatives?