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[av_heading heading=’PEOPLE POWWOW | Iloilo City’s war against illegal gambling’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY HERBERT VEGO
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Tuesday, April 18, 2017
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THE LEADERSHIP of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in Iloilo City is bent on rounding up illegal gamblers – from bet takers or koridores to illegal bookies – hammer and tongs.
This was what the city’s police director, Senior Superintendent Remus Zacharias Canieso, stressed in a meeting the other day with more than a hundred bet takers of the Small Town Lottery (STL) at the Zerrudo Arcade in Jaro, Iloilo City.
Canieso had reason to be alarmed. There had been reports that some koridores were working for unauthorized operators of the numbers game; not for the new corporate operator authorized by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), the one-and-a-half-month-old ZFIC-Iloilo Gaming Corporation.
To sum up that powwow, Canieso begged of the koridores to shun the bookies and tread the legal way by working with the legal network. “Let us work as a team,” he said. “As in basketball, you have a goal to hit.” That goal is not only to earn money for themselves but primarily to raise funds that that would enable the government to educate students, hospitalize patients and implement many other public-welfare programs.
With the police director at that time was Allan Paclibar of the Task Force Crusaders. His group, headed on the national level by retired Chief Superintendent Romeo Maganto, is the PNP’s partner in identifying fake STL personnel and in filing criminal cases against them. His group had allegedly been alerted about barangay officials collaborating with the illegalistas.
On the premise that “action speaks louder than words,” it would take more than meetings with bet takers and bettors to vanquish illegal STL. We have yet to see STL illegalistas rotting behind bars. In fact, the main reason why bookies persist is because they don’t consider the police threat too risky to overcome. They think that with all the money collected from bettors, they could simply “grease” the palm of any cop who arrests their bet takers.
The challenge for Canieso, therefore, is to prove them wrong; that his office would not tolerate collusion between his men and bet takers remitting to unauthorized bookies. In local parlance, wala areglohanay.
The PNP rank-and-file in Iloilo City is mandated to recognize only ID-bearing bet takers from ZFIC-Iloilo, which is run by Thelma “Bebit” Zerrudo as general manager. Those with no valid ID may be arrested and detained.
It’s unfortunate that there remains the bait the bet takers respond to, which is the “higher” commission offered by bookies – as much as 30 percent.
Ironically, the supposedly stable and authorized gaming corporations nationwide could not equalize because they are barred by the PCSO from increasing their bet takers’ commission. Even if allowed, it would be counter-productive on their part because of they are already saddled with the obligation to remit 40 percent of collected bets per month, or a minimum guarantee of at least two million pesos per day, to PCSO. The bet takers settle for 12 percent. The remaining 48 percent is what the STL operator pays for winners’ prizes and operating expenses. In the event some bettors hit jackpot (three winning balls called out in order of appearance), the agent corporation could lose heavily.
Conversely, an unbonded bookie may not have enough funds to pay a winning bettor.
The PCSO, incidentally, has maximized the number of STL operators from 18 in 2006 to 56 this year to curb illegal gambling and generate massive funds for social services. Despite its failure on that pretext, it expects to generate revenues of at least P28 billion this year, four times higher than last year’s collection. (hvego@yahoo.com/PN)
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