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Pressure is continuing to build on the Philippines’ foreign-facing online gambling segment, with new hiring checks, UN scrutiny and community unease over foreign workers triggering another wave of media gloom and political attacks.
Gambling regulator PAGCOR’s support for the segment remains steadfast, but negative media coverage has continued apace over unresolved problems with licensing, foreign employment and the Philippines’ international reputation.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on Monday (May 6) announced it had ceased accepting applications for foreign “POGO workers”, referring to the former unofficial acronym for offshore-facing online gambling operations.
However, Sarah Mirasol, the director of DOLE’s Manila office, said in the statement that DOLE will allow employee applications for Internet Gaming Licensees (IGLs), the term that PAGCOR brought into effect in July 2023 to replace the stigmatised “POGO” term.
Mirasol said DOLE will cross-check employee applications against PAGCOR lists of registered IGLs, local gaming agents, business process outsourcing (BPO) companies, testing labs and other groups before considering approval, while refusing any application that uses “POGO” in paperwork.
The DOLE announcement appears to rest on a technicality rather than presage new disruption to the foreign-facing sector, but any toughening of verification procedures could mitigate against alleged ongoing corruption in the immigration apparatus.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime met officials with the Presidential Anti-Organised Crime Commission (PAOCC) on Monday, with UN official Daniele Marchesi urging Manila to push harder against illegal online gambling and cyber-scamming operations.
A string of high-profile, high-volume raids in Metro Manila and Clark Freeport over the last year has freed thousands of enslaved locals and foreign nationals and confirmed the Philippines’ status as a jurisdiction at risk of the Southeast Asian-style blending of human trafficking and high-tech fraud.
Marchesi said the Philippines must put more effort into regional cooperation to address the trend.
“This requires an all-government, all-sector approach in identifying gaps as well as finding support and right solutions,” he said.
It is essential “to understand money laundering, anti-corruption, cybercrime, and looking at different points of views and areas to assess and identify the trend and problem at the national and regional level”, he added.
PAOCC spokesman Winston Casio said the significant operational costs of cracking down on these syndicates could be offset by confiscation of POGO facilities and assets.
In other developments:
- Philippine telco Globe Telecom reported a 967 percent year-on-year increase in blocks on gambling websites targeting Filipinos for the first quarter of 2024, an increase from 126 to 1,345.
- PAOCC spokesman Casio said charges are being prepared against Chinese nationals in the Philippines who have been linked to an operation backed by POGO service providers that was raided in October. The operation is alleged to have tortured its captive workers.
- Leading anti-gambling Senator Sherwin Gatchalian called for the investigation of gated communities alleged by residents to be harbouring Chinese nationals responsible for cyber-scam and online gambling operations. Gatchalian is also speaking today (May 7) at a Senate hearing into allegations of human trafficking and abuses at a “POGO compound” in Tarlac City, north of Clark Freeport.
- The chairman of the House of Representative Committee on Dangerous Drugs, Robert Ace Barbers, on Monday accused the Chinese government of deploying spies among POGO workers.
