SAN FERNANDO CITY, La Union—The operation of the illegal numbers game “jueteng” continues unabated in this province and nearby Pangasinan with daily bets fetching an average of P5 million to P6 million.
This was learned after the BusinessMirror placed a bet for P20 on Monday on the two-numbers game, called pares, authorized by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) in one of the booking outlets of First La Union Leisure Entertainment and Gaming Corp., a PCSO-authorized agent corporation (AAC) for small-town lottery (STL).
Playing on pares, bettors choose a two-number combination from a numbers pool of 1 to 38, which the sales representative (called kabo) writes on a strip of paper (pulyetos) similar to the betting pads used in jueteng.
Under PCSO-STL rules, the bets are supposed to be issued receipts through a mobile handheld terminal (MHT), a gadget carried by sales representatives of an AAC in a given province, city or municipality.
There is only one AAC in La Union which holds the three daily draws in Barangay Pagdalagan along the national highway in this city.
The PCSO rules also require sales representatives of AACs to wear uniforms and carry PCSO-STL identification cards provided by the local gaming outfit.
However, this rule is blatantly violated as nobody among the bet takers was found by the BusinessMirror to be wearing the prescribed uniforms and IDs as they go on their assigned areas no different from the ragtag jueteng operations.
Interviewed, one of the kabo said each of them are paid 10 percent of the bets placed, but admitted they were not as yet given benefits of coverage under the Social Security System (SSS) as required by the PCSO rules.
In Pangasinan STL authorized agent Golden Go Gaming Corp., which goes on similar mode of operation as the La Union AAC, struggles to compete with controversial Atong Ang’s Meridien Vista Gaming Corp., which still holds sway in the game-of-chance from Cagayan to the rest of northern Luzon.
Even without a PCSO authority to operate STL, police authorities tolerate Meridien’s computer-simulated jai-alai games with betting on two-number combination similar to STL pares mainly due to the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order.
Golden Go, reportedly owned by a retired Armed Forces general, and Meridien are in cut-throat competition to get hold of the estimated P15-million daily bets on three draws a day.
Lately, President Duterte directed PCSO chairman Jose Jorge Corpuz and general manager Alexander Balutan to revitalize STL operations in a bid to increase PCSO’s charity fund and stamp out the illegal numbers game.
Under the new guideline, 30 percent of the net sales is to be remitted to the PCSO to augment its fund for health care and hospitalization services and to ensure compliance of the national government’s “zero balance” hospital billing policy.
But apparently, the President’s order had opened wide channels for jueteng operators to invade the STL industry. Most of the big-time gambling lords now dominate STL operations in the provinces.
Ironically, the operations in La Union and Pangasinan are but a camouflage for the illicit jueteng game.