As I See It : How to create a million more legal jobs
Neal Cruz opinion@inquirer.com.ph
Inquirer News Service
WOULD you believe that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's anti-"jueteng" [illegal lottery] czar is a former jueteng lord, that the man she assigned to stop the illegal numbers game was a jueteng operator himself? As the saying goes, it takes a thief to catch a thief. But Puerto Princesa Mayor Edward Hagedorn, Ms Arroyo's anti-jueteng czar, has admitted that he is through with jueteng, that he quit cold turkey, just like a drug addict who realizes his addiction is a shortcut to ruin and decides to quit, period. Puerto Princesa is now one of the few cities and municipalities that are jueteng-free. And if he can do it, Hagedorn told the Kapihan sa Manila last Monday, other mayors can do it, too. All that is needed is the will to stop.
That is why the President chose Hagedorn, who is chair of the League of City Mayors, to be her anti-jueteng czar. He doesn't like the monicker, noting that the last Russian czar and his family were massacred by the Bolsheviks. Besides, he doesn't have any police muscle, just him and a few others tasked with eliminating a long-running cancer that is now in the terminal stage. So instead of using police muscle, he is going to use "friendly persuasion" on his fellow mayors. Jueteng cannot survive in any place if the mayor doesn't want it, he said. Which is an indirect admission that many mayors are involved in the numbers game.
So instead of arresting jueteng lords and their thousands of "cabos" [overseers] and "cobradores" [collectors] (who will impoverish the government that has to feed and build more jails for them), Hagedorn will persuade his fellow mayors to finally stop jueteng in their localities because that is the right thing to do. In fact, that is the first of the three recommendations he will submit to the President early next week. The second is to find alternative livelihoods for the thousands of cobradores and cabos who will be rendered jobless by the elimination of jueteng. The third is to suspend the mayors of cities and municipalities found to still have jueteng.
Sorry to inform all the jueteng coddlers, but legalization is not one of Hagedorn's recommendations. His assignment against jueteng, he said, is a four-letter word: STOP. So he will stop it, not legalize it. And his assignment involves stopping only jueteng, not other forms of gambling. So don't blame him if, after jueteng, other forms of gambling proliferate.
In fact, Commissioner Michael Coronel of the Anti-Jueteng Task Force told the Kapihan sa Manila forum that when jueteng was first reduced a few years ago, drug-dealing and addiction increased. The displaced jueteng workers have to turn to other means of livelihood to support their families, he said. They may turn to agriculture next, it was suggested, planting a crop called marijuana.
What he did in Puerto Princesa, Hagedorn said, was to give other jobs to those displaced by the stopping of jueteng operations. He employed them as members of Bantay-Dagat [Sea Watch], Bantay-Gubat [Forest Watch], etc.; hence, they have become more useful citizens. Other mayors can do the same thing, he said.
Those who argue that jueteng provides employment are only half-right, Hagedorn said. Jueteng saps the economy of any locality where it thrives. Far from jueteng money recirculating in the city or municipality, three-fourths of it is actually taken out of the locality.
Of the day's collection of bets, Hagedorn explained, half goes out of the area to pay government officials and policemen as bribes. One-fourth is taken by the operator as his profit. Only one-fourth goes back to the people in the form of winnings of bettors and commissions to the cobradores and cabos. This one-fourth gets smaller and smaller every day as more and more money are taken out of the locality.
One more thing: the bettors must be given an alternative to jueteng, otherwise they would just turn to "masiao," "monte," "sakla," "cara y cruz" and other forms of gambling. Jueteng actually gives the poor people "hope." After they place their bets in the morning, they are sustained the whole day by the hope that, when the cobrador comes that afternoon, he would bring the good news that they had won. When they don't win today, there is always tomorrow.
Isn't lotto of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office just another form of jueteng with another name? I asked. Except that it cannot replace jueteng for several reasons:
1. The lowest bet in lotto is P10, whereas a peso or even 50 centavos will do in jueteng.
2. One has to go to a lotto outlet in town to place his bet whereas a jueteng cobrador goes to your house, even your bedroom or kitchen, to get your bet.
3. Although a lotto prize can be in the millions of pesos, you have to wait for weeks or months to have a winner. In jueteng, however, there are scores of winners every day. And that is what sustains the jueteng bettors -- the hope that before the sun sets that day, they will be richer by a few thousand pesos for the few pesos that they bet that morning.
Is it not possible for the PCSO, I asked, to lower the price of a lotto ticket to P1 and employ the displaced jueteng collectors to sell tickets house to house on commission basis? That way, the collectors will continue to have a means of livelihood.
A great idea! Hagedorn exclaimed, adding that he would recommend that to the President and talk to the PCSO people about it right away.
He estimated that about a million people are employed by jueteng. Instead of creating jobs, Ms Arroyo will eliminate a million jobs. "With your proposal," he joked, "GMA [President Arroyo] can claim that she just created a million more jobs."
