“The public simply wants the PCSO to function as intended and not become another cookie jar for enterprising officials”
OUR country has a long history of lotteries dating back to the Spanish colonial period.
Even our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal won in a lottery while exiled in Dapitan.
Today, there is a smorgasbord of daily lottery draws that the public can choose from to try their luck while contributing to charity.
At least this is the whole idea.
But I am beginning to wonder whether this is still the case.
Under the law, Philippine lotteries are operated and managed by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office which was originally established on Oct. 30, 1935.
The PCSO holds daily draws and therefore must be collecting tens of millions of pesos every day or even more.
By law, 55 percent of all money collected must go to the prize fund. 30 percent is earmarked for health and medical assistance meaning charity, while 15 percent goes for maintenance and operating expenses of PCSO.
As we can see, the bulk of all money collected should go to winners while the rest goes to charity and office operating expenses. The public does not know however whether this is being followed to the letter.
Unfortunately, the PCSO is not very transparent in this area.
It does not make public how much money has gone to lottery winners and how much has gone to supporting charity, much less the total collection for the whole year.
If not for the QuadCom investigations of its former Chairperson, the public would not have known anything about PCSO operations.
Thanks to the QuadCom, we now at least have a glimpse of some of the things that go on in that office and, with the very little that we have seen, it has not been reassuring and this should not be.
The PCSO must ensure the integrity of our lottery system, otherwise, it becomes a highway robbery. Early last year, for instance, more than 400 people won the jackpot.
What is the probability of that happening?
Unimaginable I would say, yet, it did happen but the PCSO was never able to explain it satisfactorily and simply attributed it to mere coincidence.
The most shocking part, however, was nobody seem to have been interested enough to find out what really happened because everyone seemed to have simply accepted the explanation of the PCSO at face value.
When the Ultra Lotto jackpot was won more than a month ago which started a new round, the initial Jackpot price of P49.5-m remained static for weeks when it should be increasing every time no one wins.
The PCSO, therefore, owes the public an explanation why the rate of increase in prizes if the jackpot is not won is very predictable.
It is always around P10-m when the jackpot prize goes beyond P100-m or more till it’s won and about P5-m for several weeks before it reaches more than a P100-m.
How could this be? Is the law mandating that 55 percent of bets collected must go to the winners really being followed religiously?
Maybe the PCSO would care to explain all these for the sake of transparency and in fairness to the millions of people who buy lottery tickets every day.
If the reason why jackpot prizes remain static for weeks is because the PCSO wants to reach the minimum jackpot prize first before increasing the prizes then it should say so.
But if that is the case, why would it take weeks before the prizes start to increase and why is the PCSO doing that?
There should be an immediate increase in the jackpot prize every time no one wins in a draw.
In this country, it is the PCSO which manages and operates the lottery and does not report to any higher authority unlike in the United States wherein lotteries are somehow supervised by a higher body.
But whether that will work here or will only make things worst is another matter.
The public simply wants the PCSO to function as intended and not become another cookie jar for enterprising officials.
This is the reason why our lottery draws must be beyond question and it’s the duty of the PCSO to keep that way.
