Sign of failure to help OFWs

Batas Mauricio

IS the total deployment ban against overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) the most effective solution against the maltreatment, abuse, and even death of OFWs in Kuwait? If OFWs who have been working for quite some time now in Kuwait are to be asked, nothing good is going to come out of that total deployment ban.

In a post in Facebook, Elmer Mariano Jacalne (a relative of mine who had worked in Kuwait for years and who is still in that country today but with his immediate family members already joining him there) clarified that deployment bans like this against OFWs working in Kuwait only showed the failure of government to afford protection or provide lasting solutions to the problems of Filipinos working abroad.

Jacalne added that problems about the welfare, well-being, and safety of OFWs who have sought the proverbial greener pastures abroad have been a long-pestering concern, with the government unable to find any effective solution. Well, if the truth be told, not one single Philippine administration tried to truly solve this malady among OFWs. Up to now, while OFWs are hailed as heroes of the land, they continue to be treated as mere fattening pigs by our own government.

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I hope this column reaches the millions and millions of Filipinos who still place their bets in the native numbers game called jueteng: jueteng is a fraud and a scam, and the term used to describe its draws (supposedly to determine the winning two-number combinations, which locally is called “bola”) signifies nothing but pure and simple trickery by jueteng operators.

Not only that there is no draw, but that, they themselves dictate, by sheer whim and fancy, which numbers will win.

According to the testimony given by a former ranking officer of the Philippine National Police to the Senate on Feb. 12, 2018, draws to determine jueteng’s winning combinations, supposedly known through or with the use of small balls painted with numbers, are absolutely non-existent, and are not really resorted to or conducted by jueteng lords or operators.

What is more, if jueteng lords find out that a particular combination has drawn plenty of bets, they would make sure, at all cost, that the combination is not allowed to win. Jueteng lords will announce other winning combinations, after checking out from their computers that there are no bets on those combinations or, if at all, the bets are minimal.

But there are far more earthshaking disclosures that the former PNP officer gave to the Senate on Monday. One is the fact that STL (or small town lottery) draws by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) is actually being used to enhance jueteng operations. STL was established by law in the country several years ago with the end in view of ultimately stopping jueteng.

The problem was that, the bets collected by official STL collectors were not entirely being remitted to the government through the PCSO. Only around 20% of STL collections daily was being given to the PCSO. About 80% of STL collections were being diverted to the jueteng lords.

How did this happen? Well, it was like this: STL was also allowed to be run and operated by personalities fully identified as jueteng lords in the Philippines. One of those implicated last Monday was Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda, a jueteng operator of long standing in the whole country, who is the husband and father, respectively, of the governor and vice governor of the province of Pampanga.

It was disclosed that Bong had been the one in control of STL in several big provinces of the Philippines, including Camarines Sur, and those under the political jurisdiction of Central Luzon, Pampanga among them. This information, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said, clearly showed glaring violations of the law that created STL, which envisioned the participation of other, though less prominent, businessmen-players.

In the Senate hearing on Monday, it also came out that in Camarines Sur alone, some P5 million are being collected on a daily basis by the combined operations of STL and jueteng. But, reports that PCSO had been officially releasing show that only P61 million a month are being reported as income from STL. This would mean that STL remittances did not even reach P2 million a day.

The question last Monday was this: why did the PCSO allow this system to proliferate, resulting in huge losses to the government courtesy of jueteng lords who were permitted to operate as STL operators too? The answer here would be very clear, even from the point of view of a mere horse rig driver: someone is profiting from the millions of money that were not being remitted to the PCSO and to the government, from the PCSO itself. I wonder who these are?

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com