'Push niyo yan': Daza prods Pagcor to study potential for new version of POGO 

Northern Samar 1st district Rep. Paul Daza (Facebook)

Northern Samar 1st district Rep. Paul Daza is urging the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) to one day come up with an "upgraded" version of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO) after it pulls the plug on the current iteration of the industry. 

This, after Pagcor Chairman Alejandro Tengco himself expressed openness to having a new and improved POGO. 

"Couldn’t we create now a better version of POGO that will now encourage a level up, learn from experience, weed out the bad elements, come up with a better version that would help the economy?" Daza asked during Pagcor’s budget hearing Tuesday, Aug. 6 before the House Committee on Appropriations. 

"So while the mandate today, the instruction of the President today is to wind down the operations of all [POGO] till the end of the year, but who knows, maybe later on we can study and see if it’s possible to have a sort of an upgraded version as you had mentioned," Tengco told the senior deputy minority leader. 

Daza replied: "Well I would encourage you to do that because I think there’s a golden opportunity for the Philippines, for the country, that the industry as we know for many reasons just give it a bad name, and my principle is we learn from mistakes, from experience, and we come up with a better version." 

In his third State of the Nation Address (SONA) last July 22, President Marcos declared a total ban on POGOs. 

POGOs proliferated during the previous Duterte administration. The main reason for the current government's disenchantment with POGOs are the various criminal activities that the operators have been linked to. 

"Now in most industries...we improve the product ‘di ba (right)? Like when Microsoft Word came out, we have the version one, 1.1, I think version 10 na yata tayo ngayon (I think we're at version 10 now)," Daza said in justifying his pitch to Tengco. 

Meanwhile, the veteran congressman also prodded Pagcor chief to hasten its creation of a plan to help the workers who will be displaced by the shuttering of POGOs. 

"Could the Pagcor, because you have socio-civic programs, couldn’t you also counterpart in some way to help because especially the directly-impacted employees, I think you also have some sort of a moral obligation for them," Daza said. 

"That was part of our discussion," answered Tengco, "So initially what will be done is to come up with a plan itself, and I had committed to [Department of Labor and Employment] Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma that Pagcor will definitely find ways to help up in the fund that will be set up to help these displaced workers." 

"So we’d given ourselves till the first week of September, to come up with a general plan and then see how we could all help execute the said plan that we will come up with," the Pagcor chief said. 

"I urge Pagcor to fast track that because there’s a golden opportunity for at least funding for 2025, should there be a need to help out these displaced 30,000 to 60,000 workers, kasi (because) we have to help the indirectly impacted," Daza said.