CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The gross sales of the Small Town Lottery (STL) increased by at least 200 percent since President Aquino took over in 2010 and the STL in Pampanga topped all operations in the country, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) chief said on Wednesday.
PCSO General Manager Atty. Jose Ferdinand M. Rojas, who attended the meeting of the Central Luzon police command at Camp Olivas here, said the P47-million average monthly gross sales of the Apalit, Pampanga-based Suncove Corp. since January 2011 topped the STL operations in 14 provinces and five highly-urbanized cities.
Suncove’s gross sales in six years from September 2006 to September 2012 is at least P2.402 billion.
“It’s actually between 200 to 300 percent,” said Rojas, comparing it to gross sales for at least four years before 2010.
But Rojas stressed that the PCSO and the Central Luzon police command led by Chief Supt. Edgardo Ladao would coordinate and increase efforts to improve the collection amid the earlier allegations of Interior and Local Government Sec. Mar Roxas II that the illegal numbers game jueteng is prevalent in Pampanga.
Rojas said the province of Nueva Ejica in Central Luzon recorded the second highest in gross sales in about two years. He added that two other provinces in Region IV – Batangas and Quezon – also topped the list of the STL operators.
Rojas did not give exact gross sales in Nueva Ecija, Batangas and Quezon.
Asked by reporters if there was jueteng as alleged by Roxas during the regional peace and order council (RPOC) meeting at Clark on October 24, Rojas virtually denied that there was the existence of the illegal numbers in Pampanga and the six other provinces in Central Luzon.
He added that Sec. Roxas “is new (in his post at DILG) and has not been properly briefed yet in the STL operations.”
Rojas said the PCSO and the police has worked together since the Aquino government took over to stop illegal jueteng operations affecting collection of the STL, which was started by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2006 to combat “jueteng.”
Ladao said he will not change his earlier statements during the RPOC meeting attended by six Central Luzon governors that there is no jueteng in Pampanga.
“There are probably bookies but not jueteng. And STL bets are sometimes mistaken for jueteng,” said Ladao, who led the meeting with Atty. Manuel L. Pontanal, regional director of the National Police Commission.
Bookies are “small-time” operators who illegally pose as official Suncove bet collectors. The operators in Pampanga even reportedly lose income due to the illegal operations of the groups.
“But minimal,” added Ladao.
Ladao said “many will go hungry” if the STL operations stopped. Suncove, which started operations in Pampanga in September 2006, has 318 direct workers and 1,654 sales supervisors.
Jaime Villamin of the City of San Fernando said “illegal drugs problem worsen when there is not enough employment and why view STL as if it’s illegal when it’s sanctioned by the very government,”
Out the P2.402 billion in gross sales, at least 37 percent were given to the following: Bureau of Internal Revenue, 5 percent (P75,625,222.56); municipality, 10 percent (P217,876,684.54); province, 5 percent (P108,938,342.27); district, 2.5 percent (P54,469,171.13); Philippine National Police (local), 4.5 percent (P98,044,508.04); PNP (national), .5 percent (P10,893,834.23; charity fund, 7.5 percent (P163,119,188.81); and print, 2 percent (P31,966,471.80).
The PCSO gave Suncove the STL permit for test runs in 2006. It reportedly allowed to run the game in the province until June 2013.
Rojas and Ladao agreed that they will intensify the campaign to “make official” the collections by the STL bet collectors. They added that they will strictly enforce the use of uniforms, identification cards and official STL bet papers.
“We will immediately arrest those who will not follow the rules even if they are official Suncove agents,” said Ladao.
