SEN. Sherwin Gatchalian has stepped up his calls for a total ban on Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs), saying he recently had a chance to raise the matter with Malacañang Palace, even as police and Justice department officials are still wrangling over the latest case of suspected human trafficking involving more than 2,000 POGO workers in south Metro Manila.
“My approach is two-prong,” Sen. Gatchalian said, adding: “I submitted our chairman’s committee report for the members to review the findings and also provided a copy to Malacañang,” which he hopes would “ban POGO.”
“I also submitted it to Malacañang so they can see the chairman’s report—because it is very detailed—and so that they can study it,” he said.
The senator added this was done since, “at the start and end of it, it will still be the Executive that will take steps to ban POGOs to have peace in our country.”
His Ways and Means committee has finished a report on calls to ban POGOs after calling six hearings.
The senator noted that “the public sentiment against POGO is seen” in a survey that showed that as high as 70 percent “convey[ed] fear and rejection of POGO.”
With the recent incidents involving alleged human trafficking in certain POGO hubs, “I’m sure it could still go up,” Gatchalian said, referring to the number of people favoring a ban on POGOs in the country.
Guesting at the Kapihan sa Senado, Gatchalian said he worries over recent trends because, “they [crimes associated with POGOs] have started to spread to the locals,” whereas before, police reports usually cite simple cases of “one POGO worker kidnapping another POGO worker.” But now, he added in a mix of English and Filipino, the human trafficking involves not just foreigners, but also Filipinos, including “Fil-Chinese.”
He recalled one video shown to them where one victim whose finger was about to be cut was speaking in Tagalog, “indicating that locals are being kidnapped now.”
He said that at the end of the day, “It’s the Executive that will do that [issue a ban],” adding that “the legislative is just recommendatory and that’s why the resolution we are passing, is to encourage. But eventually the action for that must come from the Executive.”
Gatchalian added, “that’s why I went to Malacanang to submit the report.”
He said the only argument favoring the retention of POGOs is the revenue they bring in to the government, via the state gaming agency Pagcor. However, in their Senate committee report, they noted that “the promised P30 billion or P40 billion” in revenue is no longer the case. In 2021, he added, it was only “at P3 billion plus.”
Nonetheless, Gatchalian credited the current management at Pagcor with instituting serious reforms in regulating POGOs after acknowledging lapses of the past agency administration. “In fairness to Pagcor, they saw [lapses], and they have corrected them. Inaayos nila, lumalabas iyan sa hearing [They have fixed them, we’ve seen that in hearings],” he added.
Pagcor recently fired its third-party auditor that was supposed to validate the incomes reported to it by POGOs, and vowed to prosecute the parties involved in the apparent fraud committed in securing a multibillion-peso contract.