Robredo: ‘Jueteng’ continues to thrive

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—The illegal numbers racket “jueteng” continues to thrive using the government-run small town lottery (STL) as a cover, according to Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo.

Robredo, here for a road show on local government transparency, said government lost billions of pesos from operations of STL because of jueteng.

He said the last remittance from STL operators was P900 million, but government estimated that profits should have reached P12 billion or a difference of more than P11 billion believed to have gone to jueteng operators.

He said while the government has designed the Loterya ng Bayan, the planned replacement of STL, to defeat jueteng, local governments should have the last say over whether or not to allow the numbers game in their territories.

Robredo made the comments on jueteng as reports in Manila quoted a female witness as saying several policemen and an alleged jueteng operator identified only as Allan Manuela have been harassing operators of jai-alai, a numbers game licensed at the Cagayan Export Zone Authority, to force them to pay protection money worth at least P300,000 a month.

The witness, who identified herself only as Katrina, said she was a former “cabo,” or supervisor, of jueteng in southern parts of Luzon and Metro Manila until she got employed by the firm licensed to operate jai-alai to “go legal.”

According to Robredo, the  Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office

(PCSO) would likely start the new lottery in towns where jueteng thrives.

He said the new lottery is facing opposition from people who benefit from jueteng.

“Sometimes people reject government-run lottery … sometimes they reject what is legal because they want to keep what is illegal, like jueteng,” he said.

The implementing rules and regulations of the Loterya, which the PCSO approved in February, does not require operators to secure the consent of towns where they intend to operate.

He said the government strategy is allow the PCSO to make the judgment call on whether the Loterya needs to be operated in a community to rid it of jueteng.

“The national government is obliged to stop what is illegal,” Robredo said.  Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon