Homeless Swept off Streets for Olympic Image

CHAN:While Beijing starts to clean up its city streets ahead of the Olympic Games, homeless people are complaining that they are being deprived of their only means of earning a living - collecting discarded bottles in downtown areas.

STORY: Ge Binglun and Zhang Zhiqing have made a living collecting plastic drinks bottles and picking up trash for years. In the past, they had been able to collect more than 70 bottles a day at Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, selling each bottle for 10 cents, equal to one U.S. cent, earning them enough money to feed themselves.

But now this life line has been cut, as Beijing starts its pre-Olympic clean-up, which aims to rid the city of beggars, hawkers and prostitutes before the start of the Games in August.

The planned relocation of what the CCP dubs "problematic residents" is aimed at creating a spotless image of the Chinese capital in time for the arrival of an estimated 500,000 foreign tourists, athletes and journalists.

Among the targets are homeless people, 60-year-old Ge Binglun and 70-year-old Zhang Zhiqing. They used to live in the slums of Qianmen area, just south of Tiananmen Square. That is until they were picked up by a police van from their shacks and dropped off at a bus station on the outskirts of Beijing.

[Lao Zhang, Homeless Beijinger]:"Where can I go? Please tell me where I can go if I want to leave this place? There is no place for me to go to. I was counting on collecting plastic bottles for a living. But they don't allow us to do it anymore. How can I make a living? I don't know what to do. I have no tears left to cry."

[Ge Binglun, Homeless Beijinger]:"There are less than two months left to the Olympics. When the Games finish, I can have my life back again.”

China has been under fire over its handling of dissidents, homeless people and migrant workers ahead of the Games, which start on August 8.