Geisha Kow­lessar

It's a place where dreams are made and hopes shat­tered. Flu­o­res­cent neon lights, large pok­er ta­bles and rows of shiny slot ma­chines en­tice. Smil­ing wait­ress­es stand by ready to serve. Casi­nos, or mem­bers clubs as they are known in T&T, have rapid­ly mush­roomed through­out the coun­try, be­com­ing pop­u­lar recre­ation spots. In 2007, then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning threat­ened to shut down the gam­ing in­dus­try, claim­ing they were con­tribut­ing to a break­down in fam­i­ly val­ues and pro­vid­ing an easy front for crime. Four years lat­er, the in­dus­try is yet to be reg­u­larised.

Man­ning made an­oth­er im­pas­sioned call to shut down the in­dus­try at a news con­fer­ence at his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy of­fice two weeks ago. He al­so asked why Gov­ern­ment had failed to use the state of emer­gency to crack down on mem­bers clubs. "We agreed to a five-year phase-out pe­ri­od. But since the May 24, 2010, gen­er­al elec­tion there has been a pro­lif­er­a­tion of casi­nos through­out the coun­try," Man­ning said. Has the casi­no in­dus­try been a boom or bust for T&T's econ­o­my?

Abuse of Pri­vate Mem­bers' Club Act-Cadiz

There are close to 75 casi­nos in T&T and they op­er­ate with no reg­u­la­tions, said Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Stephen Cadiz. "That tells me some­thing. When you see a busi­ness like that just take off it sends a very clear mes­sage that there is an aw­ful lot of mon­ey to be made in it. "It al­so says there is no reg­u­la­tion what­so­ev­er and peo­ple are set­ting up casi­nos in back­yards, in res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hoods, in down­town Port-of-Spain. "When you see it mush­room­ing like that it says things are mov­ing at a pace and there is some­thing that is just not right," Cadiz said.

The min­is­ter said casi­no own­ers have avoid­ed pay­ing tax­es and ques­tions have been raised about their hir­ing prac­tices and the work­ing con­di­tions of em­ploy­ees. "The casi­no in­dus­try has been op­er­at­ing in a very un­reg­u­lat­ed man­ner since it start­ed. Gam­bling has been go­ing on in T&T for cen­turies but the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions un­der which the casi­nos have been op­er­at­ing are be­ing abused un­der the Pri­vate Mem­bers' Club Act," Cadiz said. Spin-off ef­fects, such as gam­bling ad­dic­tion, are of se­ri­ous con­cern to gov­ern­ment, he said. "With the in­dus­try be­ing un­reg­u­lat­ed there is al­so the prob­lem of mon­ey laun­der­ing. "The Gov­ern­ment will have to take a de­ci­sion to reg­u­late this in­dus­try and that is ex­act­ly what it is, it is an in­dus­try."

Ac­cord­ing to Cadiz, some 10,000 peo­ple are em­ployed by casi­no own­ers and those jobs are "gen­er­al­ly good pay­ing." "There are a num­ber of ben­e­fits from the bet­ter run casi­nos when you speak to the em­ploy­ees. The wages are very ac­cept­able and very favourable. "If you take Trinidad and To­ba­go, the phys­i­cal size of the coun­try and the pop­u­la­tion with in ex­cess of 75 casi­nos op­er­at­ing . . . In Sin­ga­pore, for in­stance, which has three times our pop­u­la­tion, there are on­ly two casi­nos," Cadiz point­ed out. What is the role of the Trade Min­istry in the casi­no in­dus­try? Cadiz said since the gam­bling in­dus­try could be equat­ed to an em­ploy­ment in­dus­try, it falls un­der the scruti­ny of the Trade Min­istry. "Casi­no gam­bling in­dus­try is al­so part of a tourism plant so that's an­oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion we would have to take in.

"How does it af­fect tourism? Can it boost tourism? There are the oth­er as­pects of casi­no gam­bling, some peo­ple say we shouldn't have it at all," Cadiz said. Asked checks were be­ing made to en­sure for­eign­ers em­ployed with lo­cal casi­nos had prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion, Cadiz said the Gov­ern­ment was yet to im­ple­ment such ini­tia­tives. "We haven't reached close to that. We haven't gone that far as yet," he said. A gam­ing com­mis­sion es­tab­lished for all as­pects of gam­bling is one rec­om­men­da­tion from the Trade Min­istry. "It would not on­ly be re­spon­si­ble for li­cens­ing and for the col­lec­tion of tax­es but it would be the reg­u­la­to­ry body for casi­no gam­bling to en­sure that casi­nos op­er­ate with­in the reg­u­la­tions that Gov­ern­ment would set."

Dire reper­cus­sions from clo­sure

Shut down casi­nos and the coun­try will not on­ly be sad­dled with ad­di­tion­al un­em­ploy­ment but al­so a high­er crime rate. That is the warn­ing from pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mem­bers' Club As­so­ci­a­tion, Sher­ry Per­sad, who agreed there was ur­gent need for reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion. She said it was dif­fi­cult to put a price tag on year­ly prof­its but ad­mit­ted the in­dus­try gen­er­ates mil­lions per year. Per­sad said the in­dus­try had yield­ed mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits and she pre­dict­ed that gam­bling could mar­ket T&T as a ma­jor tourist des­ti­na­tion. Per­sad, who is al­so the di­rec­tor of hu­man re­sources and pub­lic re­la­tions at the Ma Pau Mem­bers Club, said such fa­cil­i­ties are gov­erned un­der a recre­ation­al club li­cense. "Al­though there may be casi­no like ac­tiv­i­ties, we do not have a li­cense for a casi­no. We have no casi­nos in Trinidad, we have mem­bers clubs," Per­sad ex­plained.

That in­dus­try di­rect­ly em­ploys some 7,000 peo­ple, the ma­jor­i­ty of whom are sin­gle moth­ers from de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties. "We al­so have some 30,000 de­pen­dents on that in­dus­try. We al­so have lot of sup­ple­men­tary peo­ple mean­ing lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers, cater­ers and taxi dri­vers," Per­sad added. She said op­por­tu­ni­ties were pro­vid­ed to em­ploy­ees who couldn't even fin­ish their ba­sic pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion. "We gave them that op­por­tu­ni­ty to earn a de­cent salary. We not on­ly hire but we train and give our em­ploy­ees ad­di­tion­al skills. We al­so give back to the coun­try through our char­i­ty dri­ves," Per­sad said. She said reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion was ur­gent­ly need­ed as em­ploy­ees were cur­rent­ly de­barred from ob­tain­ing bank loans and they were deemed "il­le­gal." "We pay Gov­ern­ment tax­es on all this equip­ment yet we are deemed to be il­le­gal. No­body wants to work in an il­le­gal in­dus­try. What about our em­ploy­ees, they can't get a loan," Per­sad added.

She said tax­es were paid ac­cord­ing to the dif­fer­ent types of equip­ment. A slot ma­chine, Per­sad, ex­plained was taxed around $15,000 an­nu­al­ly by Gov­ern­ment. In a bid to has­ten the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion process, the as­so­ci­a­tion hired a lawyer to draft pro­pos­als which were for­ward­ed to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan late last year. Per­sad said if the casi­no in­dus­try was to be shut down, bars should al­so be closed. "When we talk about ad­dic­tion there are many forms of ad­dic­tion. There are those on top like al­co­holism and cig­a­rette smok­ing and gam­bling falls way be­low," she as­sert­ed. Com­ment­ing on con­cerns that the in­dus­try could face clo­sure, Per­sad warned that gam­bling would con­tin­ue un­der­ground.

"The in­dus­try is go­ing to go un­der, mean­ing it is still go­ing to hap­pen, maybe in some­body's house, maybe in a base­ment some­where. "That is go­ing to make the prob­lem even worse." Asked if casi­nos were gen­er­al­ly used as a front for pros­ti­tu­tion and white col­lar crimes, Per­sad, who has been in the in­dus­try for the past 18 years, said she has heard of such claims. "We don't have any prob­lems with any of our mem­bers with­in our as­so­ci­a­tion. There may be such prob­lems but I am not aware of them. "Any­one who has that in­for­ma­tion by all means take it to the au­thor­i­ties."

Casi­nos hailed by sin­gle par­ents

Ayan­na Fran­cis, 30, of Men­tor Al­ley, Laven­tille, is a re­cep­tion su­per­vi­sor at the Ma Pau Mem­bers' Club. Her job is to greet clients as they en­ter the club. The start­ing salary, she said, com­pelled her to join the gam­bling in­dus­try. "I'm from Laven­tille, what peo­ple would call a high risk area. I'm a sin­gle par­ent, my daugh­ter's dad was shot and killed four years ago. "With my job I have been able to take care of my daugh­ter and help my mom. I have been af­ford­ed a lot of con­ces­sions at my job to help my fam­i­ly live a much more com­fort­able life and have a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing," Fran­cis said. She said many sin­gle par­ents like her­self and peo­ple who have just left school have been able to get lu­cra­tive jobs in the in­dus­try.