20 August 2007
LEGAZPI CITY—POLICE CHIEFS in three cities and 15 towns in Albay and the provincial police director signed on Friday a covenant to keep themselves clean of bribes from operators and protectors of illegal activities, especially the illegal numbers game jueteng.
Albay police director Senior Supt. Herold Ubalde said he and the 18 police chiefs would hang framed copies of the signed covenant in their respective offices to affirm their sincere efforts to subdue gambling and other forms of illegal activities in the province.
In the Bicol region, which was once reputed as one of the hotbeds of jueteng in the country, Albay had the biggest number of arrested individuals involved in jueteng.
From January to August this year, Albay police arrested 115 people in 18 antigambling operations. There were only 11 operations over the same period in 2006.
Last Aug. 5, 16 persons allegedly involved in jueteng operations were arrested in Malilipot town, the latest raid conducted by Albay police.
The suspects were still in jail facing charges and none of them has posted the recommended P20,000-bail each.
In Camarines Sur, there were 80 arrests; Camarines Norte, 35; Sorsogon, 30; Masbate, 18; and Catanduanes, 1.
Jueteng operations these days, Ubalde said, had been reportedly happening in remote towns and in islands, like Cag-raray, San Miguel and Rapu-Rapu, more than in key mainland cities and towns where violators can be caught easily.
He said these were also the areas not yet reached by the Small Town Lottery (STL), while some of these areas were rebel-infested that the police could not easily penetrate for security reasons.
Ubalde, however, said these factors would not stop them from strictly adhering to laws supporting the campaign against illegal gambling regardless of who operated or protected it.
Following earlier beliefs that the STL was nothing but a legal cover up for jueteng, Ubalde said the provincial board reported having received information that STL results were being rigged by altering or manipulating the draw machines of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) here.
The STL in Albay had been under investigation by the provincial board on the issue that STL was being used as a front for jueteng.
Ubalde confirmed the transfer of many of the people involved in jueteng to STL. “If it is also true that STL results are being manipulated, then STL would be nothing different from jueteng, whose results are usually being controlled for its operators’ greater gain,” he added.
He added the provincial board’s committee on games and amusements also relayed reports that not all bets or collections were being reported to the PCSO.
If true, Ubalde said, then STL is “bookies.”
Bookies, he explained, is an illegal activity where smaller bets are not remitted to the STL but instead consolidated by small-time financiers to operate their own numbers game using the results of the STL as their bases for drawing the winning combinations.
Ubalde said he has informed the PCSO of these unconfirmed reports and recommended that the guidelines for STL operations be strengthened to keep its credibility as a legitimate numbers game.
Some of there recommendations were to require STL collectors to always wear their IDs, the STL operators to furnish the police with the names of their legitimate collectors, and to make STL “polietos” an accountable form by stamping control numbers on them.
He added that it could also be an option to televise STL draws in a local TV station and to furnish concerned parties with copies of sales report supported by documents. Ephraim Aguilar, Inquirer Southern Luzon
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