Over the last months, betting parlours, or whatever they choose to call themselves, have been sprouting all over our towns and villages. There is now probably no town or village without at least one.
People who owned shops which were not doing so well have found refuge in selling or leasing to these entrepreneurs.
This proliferation of betting parlours has come rather suddenly upon the people of Malta. So far as one can remember, no proper debate was ever held on whether this was desirable or opportune.
It is true that ever since the Lotto Department has been privatized, there has been pressure on the people of Malta to bet more and more. It is true that before there was a lot of uncontrolled and illegal betting on sports in general and football and horse racing in particular. Whether this has been decreased by the more available opportunity to bet in a properly organized way is as yet uncertain.
It is also true that in today’s world, with the technological advances that have been made, it is possible to bet online on a wide variety of hazard games and many times with winnings that are absolutely unobtainable in Malta.
In fact, here in Malta we host many of these online gaming companies which have been attracted here by a benevolent tax regime and other enticements.
But still this proliferation of betting shops or parlours has been unprecedented. Hidden away from public gaze, something must have happened and where previously there was a perhaps too strict legal environment has somehow now been relaxed and hence betting shops sprouted on most of our high streets.
Somehow, someone, somewhere, must account to the Maltese public the impact and cumulative effect of all these parlours on the weak and needy, those in short who are most at risk with such proliferation. A person with a job, a steady family life, and children to bring up will not be so attracted as a person with debts to pay, with finances near rock bottom and with an unstable lifestyle. Such people were in a previous age lotto and Super Five addicts. Today, they risk getting even more addicted and in a short time they become heavy gamblers.
This is what used to be said of casinos in general and it is unquestionably true that many families have been damaged by some family members who squandered the family’s fortunes at some casino or other.
At the very least, what the country expects is that the rules and the laws are fully obeyed. If the law says, for instance, that the doors to such betting parlours must be kept closed at all times, that is what must be done. If the law says that people under the legal age must not be inside there, that is what must be enforced. Why are the police turning so many blind eyes to infractions?
The powers of any authority in the country are given so that the laws are obeyed. It is true these are entrepreneurs and that the authorities responsible for permits etc must be not anti-business, but that cannot mean that they ride roughshod over the concerns of neighbours et al about a betting shop opening up in a locality.
Finally, once again we warn about the cumulative impact of such betting opportunities on the name and image of Malta itself. Anybody landing at the airport would be mistaken if he/she were to think they have come to Las Vegas instead of an island with a tremendous history in the middle of the Mediterranean, given so many huge adverts for betting or casinos at the airport.