Offline Casino Operators: We were fooled

Trinidad & Tobago: President of the Association of Members Clubs of T&T (AMC) Brian Phillip has said the association was fooled by its continued discussions with Minister in the Ministry of Finance Minister Conrad Enill into believing that there was hope for the survival of the industry.

Phillip’s comment came in the wake of Wednesday’s statement by Prime Minister Patrick Manning vowing to stop the operation of casinos in the country.

Following a walkabout in Tunapuna, Manning insisted that if he allowed casinos to continue operating it would only encourage mafia and organised crime.

“This Government will operate on the basis of right and wrong,” he said.

Both the AMC and the Union of Members Clubs and Lottery Workers were meeting yesterday to decide their next moves.

Fools’ game

“We were taken for fools,” Phillips said.

Phillip expressed surprise at Manning’s comment that casino operators were not operating within the law.

“The Government made gambling legal by allowing operators to pay taxes for the past 10 years. If that was the case, why was the law not enforced?”

Manning was forced to comment about the issue after two Ma Pau workers, Jade Wallace and Seema Dookran, pleaded with him to regulate the industry rather than close it down.

Manning insisted that he would not let the situation continue, as many lives have been ruined as a result of gambling.

“We will close the industry in such a way that the workers will be retrained. They will be given alternative jobs. They will not be put on the streets.”

There are 47 locally owned members clubs and approximately 7000 workers employed in the industry.

Manning argued that gambling has brought no social benefits to the country.

He said several of his friends in San Fernando had gone astray due to this addiction.

“When I hear the amount of money they spent in one night in gambling, I ask myself what about their children and families? Are they being provided for?”

Manning explains

Manning said the party’s founder and country’s first Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams was not in support of gambling, since he believed it fuelled organised crime and the mafia.

“Some of us get a lucrative existence out of it, but that does not make it right. Gambling is a social evil. Look at Play Whe. Any how you cut it, it does not come out right.”

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