POGOs

Around midnight at a business hub in Alabang, Muntinlupa, you can see from the windows of adjacent high-rise buildings that they are hives of activity. From ground floor lobbies up to the higher floors as high as the eye can see, there are people milling around.

And they look Chinese. Most of them look no older than 30. They are dressed casually. As they leave the high-rises, most of them walk around the area, or along the main Alabang-Zapote road going to Las Piñas, crowding the 24-hour convenience stores, but also the Chinese restaurants and grocery stores that have sprouted all over the area.

The large vacant lot enclosed with a red metal wall, wherein a Chinese-only food court was set up recently, remains shuttered by the Las Piñas government. But behind this, three large gray buildings have sprung up, amazingly quickly. It looks like it’s going to be a hub of sorts for offshore gaming operations of the Chinese, since Chinese-looking workers are often seen around the construction site. These workers look a bit older than the rowdy twenty-somethings at the business hub. Some look like they’ve had a hard life, like our ordinary construction workers. Foreigners are not allowed to take such jobs from Filipinos.

Across this red-walled area, two small Chinese grocery stores have opened. Few products have English translations, and no official receipts are issued. Nearby, a brightly lit Chinese restaurant is being constructed as rapidly as the three buildings.

The Los Angeles Times, in a recent article, called the Philippines the casino of China.

How did all this happen?

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Lawyer Jose Tria, Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. vice president for offshore gaming, says the country has had online gaming for 15 years now. But instead of PAGCOR, the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority had jurisdiction over the operations. The games were supposed to be confined to the economic zone, but because of a gray area in the mandate of the CEZA, this was not followed.

The national government got a measly P56 million a year from online gaming. Tria explained that half of the earnings went to the private operator and the other half to CEZA. Of that 50 percent, only 5 percent was remitted by CEZA to the national government.

So when the Duterte administration came in, it was decided that online gaming would be placed under PAGCOR. It was renamed Philippine offshore gaming operations, and POGO was born. But it’s the same banana: these are online games operated and played by foreigners.

PAGCOR, however, has nationwide jurisdiction. So the POGOs suddenly could operate wherever PAGCOR could exercise its regulatory power.

The first POGO outside CEZA began operating in late 2016. In that brief period, Tria said PAGCOR earned P350 million.

Gambling including online gaming is banned in China. But there’s a big demand, and it’s hugely lucrative. And so POGOs mushroomed all over Metro Manila and other parts of the country last year. Because the bettors are Chinese, the bettor calling centers must be manned by those who speak the language of the mainland, Mandarin.

There are also Indonesians, Malaysians, Russians and South Koreans operating POGOs in the Philippines, but Tria estimates that Chinese account for 80 percent.

As of PAGCOR’s latest count, there are 130,000 Chinese working in POGOs. All of them, Tria told “The Chiefs” this week on Cignal TV / One News, obtained tourist visas on arrival in the Philippines.

Many are young and don’t speak Filipino, although they have some grasp of rudimentary English. The Philippines is not supposed to get players from countries where online gaming is banned, but so far, Tria told us, there had been no complaints along this line from Beijing. Until yesterday, when the Chinese embassy issued a statement warning its citizens that online gambling is illegal in their country.

In 2017, Tria says PAGCOR earned P4 billion from POGOs. Offshore gaming now accounts for 11 percent of PAGCOR’s income; casinos, 35 percent; e-games, 36 percent, and bingo 1.54 percent.

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With the explosion of POGOs, the support services needed by workers in an alien environment are also springing up all over, such as restaurants and grocery stores stocked with products in Chinese characters.

At least one large outlet of a major supermarket chain now has aisle signage written in both English and Chinese characters. Which is understandable, considering that at any time during its operating hours, the supermarket, located in a call center hub, is full of Chinese shoppers.

Tria, however, admitted that PAGCOR has received numerous complaints about the behavior of POGO workers. This is inevitable when there is a rapid influx of foreigners who have had no time to learn the local language and familiarize themselves with the culture.

We’re not sure if it’s just the law of unintended consequences at work, or if the government actually expected this deluge of Chinese-operated POGOs.

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Because of the mounting complaints, Tria said PAGCOR is preparing to confine all POGO operations in self-contained hubs, to minimize interaction with locals. By 2021, all POGO licenses outside such hubs will be canceled, he said.

That’s still about two years away. In the meantime, those old enough to remember are warning that the phenomenon is similar to the influx of Japanese workers in the decades before World War II. When the war broke out, friendly Japanese neighbors became part of the occupation forces.

Prof. Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, does not think there is a Chinese “creeping invasion” underway.

But Batongbacal, who faced The Chiefs together with Tria, shares the concern of security officials about the need to balance the country’s economic gains with national security.

Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua expressed “grave concern” yesterday over the plan for POGO hubs. He said some Filipino employers were subjecting their Chinese workers to the equivalent of “modern slavery.” Malacañang urged the Chinese to file formal complaints.

The Chinese POGO workers remind me of overseas Filipino workers, who are compelled by circumstances at home to grab opportunities abroad for earning a decent wage.

Like OFWs in host countries, however, all foreigners in the Philippines must play by the rules.