CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) has announced that its expanded Small Town Lottery (STL) is earning almost P2 billion a month and has generated 309,436 regular employees.
In a statement on Wednesday, PCSO general manager Alexander Balutan said STL earnings help fund President Duterte’s free medical services to the poorest of the poor. He also said its 309,436 employees are enjoying mandatory benefits as required by law.
“Apart from providing economic activity to the province, the established and existing STL corporations provide regular medical mission and educational assistance to their towns and municipalities. The goal of STL expansion is to spread out the system of corporate social responsibility to all the provinces with STL licenses and operators,” Balutan said.
In 2017, a total of 1,640 members of Social Security System, PhilHealth and Pag-ibig were enrolled by existing STL corporations where a clear majority are already benefi ciaries of SSS pensions and loan benefi ts, he added.
“These are all reflections of the STL corporations’ desire to have concrete corporate social responsibility program in the communities where they conduct business, unfortunately, gambling lords are desperate to kick them out of the picture,” Balutan said.
He also said STL corporations have their own financial assistance in providing land and building the houses for their employees.
“Majority of these STL employees are those who could not pass the nitty-gritties of job fairs because of their old age and just because they are physically impaired. At least they are now earning more than P7,000 a month to feed their families rather than see these less fortunate sector in our society running for illegal drug syndicates and other criminal activities just to earn money to live,” he said.
From January to May 2018, STL has provided the national government P9.7B revenues.
At present, there are 83 Authorized Agent Corporations (AACs) playing STL nationwide.
“These corporations are doing great for us especially in providing additional fund for our charity services to the people,” Balutan said.
From January to May, the PCSO has spent more than P3 billion with almost 154,000 patients who received financial assistance through guarantee letters to pay for their hospital bills, medicines and cancer treatments, the top three most sought requests to PCSO.
In 2017, STL earned P15.7 billion compared to up to P4.7 billion a year from the two previous administrations.
Balutan said PCSO paid the government P3.5 billion in taxes alone during the first quarter of 2018. In 2017, PCSO paid the government a total of P7.7 billion in taxes from its P52.9 billion total revenue collections.
