PCSO mulls ‘Loterya ng Bayan’

ANGELES CITY — The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) announced plans to implement a pilot program called Loterya ng Bayan to "provide legitimate employment to jueteng cobradors and cabos" (operators and collectors) displaced by the nationwide crackdown on the popular illegal numbers game.

In a letter to Mayor Carmelo Lazatin of this city, PCSO chairman Sergio Valencia said his agency would "implement a pilot program which we shall call Loterya ng Bayan, whereby the agency shall take over the operations of jueteng in designated localities, with the end in view of providing a legal and transparent alternative game of chance to the people."

Valencia’s letter was in response to Lazatin’s formal request for the PCSO to absorb into its "Easy 2" game the thousands of displaced jueteng workers nationwide.

In his earlier letter to the PCSO, Lazatin asked that jueteng cobradors and cabos be made PCSO employees and allow them to adopt jueteng strategies to boost patronage of Easy 2, which is operated by the government. About 1,500 families were displaced by the May crackdown on jueteng in his city.

But Valencia wrote to Lazatin that "much as we would like to immediately act on your proposal as it will redound to public service, especially to help the masses, we regret that we cannot immediately do so in view of restrictions in the organizational structure of the PCSO, it being a government agency governed by civil service rules and regulations." Instead, the PCSO is planning Loterya ng Bayan, he added.

Arnel Casas, assistant department manager of the online lottery division of the PCSO, said that the Loterya ng Bayan would be similar to jueteng. He could not explain, however, how Lazatin’s proposal differed from the Loterya ng Bayan.