Buy-and-sell store owner wins P44M lotto jackpot

MANILA, Philippines — A buy-and-sell store owner has won close to P44 million in jackpot prize of the Lotto 6/42.

The 62-year-old father of three from Taguig City was the lone winner to pick the winning number combination 18-01-41-15-40-16 in the game’s Oct. 10. He won for himself exactly P43,834,034.

The winner, who owns a buy-and-sell store, claimed his prize at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) on Thursday. He told PCSO Vice Chair and General Manager Jose Ferdinand Rojas that he would use his prize to expand the shop he and his wife have been managing.

Rojas said that the winner has been an avid player of the PCSO’s lottery games for the past two decades before he won the jackpot prize. He added that the winner availed himself of the game’s System 9 option, where 84 computer-generated number combinations were selected. For this, he shelled out P1,680.

Apart from expanding his business, the winner said that he would also like to share a portion of his winnings with his children while saving the rest for his and his wife’s future needs.

Rojas called on the public on Thursday to continue supporting the agency’s games because, aside from changing the lives of jackpot winners, it has also helped many patients survive their medical crises through state assistance on hospital bills.

For every peso the PCSO generates, 30 percent of it goes to the charity fund which supports the Individual Medical Assistance Program (IMAP) that “responds to the needs of indigent Filipinos for affordable medical and health care.”

On Monday, the PCSO launched a streamlined procedure speeding up its medical assistance program by doing away with face-to-face interviews.

Under the updated IMAP procedure, the agency’s social workers need not interview anymore patients in need of financial assistance in hospitals that have partnered with the PCSO in its ASAP (At Source Ang Processing) program. The socioeconomic evaluation of these patients will now be gathered through a new section in the IMAP form.

In a statement, Rojas said that doing away with the interview would “reduce the long queues of patients” at the agency’s extension office at the Lung Center of the Philippines in Quezon City. He noted that it would also “significantly cut the processing time” for IMAP applicants, in need of financial assistance for hospitalization and medical bills, from at least a week to three days.

“We considered the feedback of our clients and came up with this streamlined procedure that will make it faster and easier for applicants to receive the help they need,” Rojas said.

Currently, hospitals that partner with the PCSO in its ASAP program are St. Luke’s Medical Center and 13 public hospitals, including Amang Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center, Rizal Medical Center, and the National Kidney and Transplant Institute.

From an average daily assistance of P4 million in 2010, the agency now approves an average of P18.5 million in financial assistance daily. SFM