ESSEN, Germany, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- A German city announced the start of a project offering beer and tobacco products to alcoholics and other addicts in exchange for cleaning city streets.

The city of Essen in North Rhine-Westphalia announced Wednesday is the first day of the "Pick Up" project, which is recruiting alcoholics and drug addicts to clean city streets in exchange for $1.58 per hour as well as free beer, tobacco and food.


The city said the project, which is being run by a group called Direct Addiction Help and overseen by social workers, will begin with six people sweeping streets and picking up garbage. The volunteers will receive payments at the end of their shifts comprised of their owed cash, three bottles of beer, tobacco for smokers and a hot meal.

"The project participants are people who need to have a daily structure just to get back on their feet," Oliver Balgar, project coordinator for Direct Addiction Help, told the Bild newspaper.

Direct Addiction Help said the aim of providing the workers with beer and tobacco is "harm reduction" for those who are not currently willing or able to abstain from the substances completely.

"The aim of the program is not to supply people with beer," the group said in a statement. "For the participants it is about a meaningful daily structure, feeling useful and learning a new way to behave."