Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s sudden order to shut down Philippines Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) vendors created plenty of fallout, much of which is still coming to light. In a July 29 filing, Pacific Online Systems Corp specifically outlined how the decision will devastate workers, charities and businesses.
As reported by Sun Star, Pacific Online detailed the possible effects in a filing with the Philippines Stock Exchange. Although they tried to outline how bad it is, it’s apparently too much for them to add up just yet. “The negative impact of the suspension… are inestimable at this point; and the Corporation can only hope that the suspension will be lifted sooner rather than later,” they wrote.
Pacific Online provided the online portion of lottery systems used by the PCSO for Visayas and Mindanao provinces of the country, but its subsidiary, Total Gaming Technologies, provide Keno games nationwide. As a result, they had a pretty good idea of the financials, workforce, and potential impact of Duterte’s sudden decision.
The president decided to end PCSO operations in a July 26 announcement, claiming their operations were corrupt and giving them 24 hours to shut down. By July 29, 30,000 outlets had closed, leaving more than 120,000 employees suddenly out of work. Not only does that flood the pool of job seekers, but it cuts off an avenue of funding for charities.
As many are now starting to point out, the PCSO’s top officials were Duterte appointees, so if they agency was corrupt, his own hand-picked officials had to be a part of that, and it’s unlikely that 120,000 employees and several charities were all participating in the corruption. Furthermore, as Senator Risa Hontiveros pointed out, Duterte is throwing out the baby with the bathwater by punishing the entire operation.
From the gambling point of view, none of this is any good either. While Duterte has, atleast in the past, indicated that he hates gambling, a lack of a regulated PCSO presence will give rise to more local, unregulated gambling options, putting citizens at risk of even more danger, and creating the possibility for more corruption as the games go over looked, for a price.
Unfortunately, no one really knows what the plan seems to be going forward either. Duterte made the order to close PCSO locations on TV, and no formal order has been issued. We’ll all have to stumble through this one, one step at at time.
