The expanded Small Town Lottery has generated 309,436 regular employees who are enjoying mandatory benefits as required by law, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office said yesterday.
The STL workforce is giving the national government almost P2 billion a month to fund President Rodrigo Duterte’s free medical services to the poorest of the poor, PCSO general manager Alexander Balutan said.
“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 fact, Balutan said, in 2017 a total of 1,640 members of Social Security System, PhilHealth and Pag-ibig were enrolled by existing STL corporations, the majority of which are already beneficiaries of SSS pensions and loan benefits.
“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.
Balutan also revealed that STL corporations have their own financial assistance in providing land and building the houses for their employees.
“You know what? 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 we will see these less fortunate sectors in our society running for illegal drug syndicates and other criminal activities just to earn a living,” he said.
Balutan said PCSO is earning almost P2 billion a month from STL operations, a very potent revenue-collection machine of the government.
“From January to May 2018, STL has already provided the government P9.7-billion revenues. At present, we have 83 Authorized Agent Corporations playing STL nationwide. These corporations are doing great for us especially in providing additional fund for our charity services to the people. In fact, from January to May, PCSO has already 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,” he said.
In 2017, STL earned P15.7 billion compared to P4.7 billion only 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.
Meanwhile, Balutan said the PCSO will continue to help the national government eradicate any illegal numbers game in the country by aggressively promoting STL and other lottery products such as Lotto, Keno, digital games as prescribed in President Rodrigo Duterte’s Executive Order No. 13.
EO-13 is an act “strengthening the fight against illegal gambling and clarifying the jurisdiction and authority of concerned agencies in the regulation and licensing of gambling and online gaming facilities, and for other purposes” was signed into law by the President on Feb. 2, 2017.
Balutan said STL is gaining ground in jueteng-infested areas in Luzon and swertres and masiao in Visayas and Mindanao, respectively, as many gambling lords have already opted to join the government’s legal numbers game.