WITH each passing day, it seems the news brings us new revelations of crimes and corruption associated with Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs), which the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) has tried — unsuccessfully — to destigmatize by rebranding them as IGLs, or international gaming licensees. We have more than once in the recent past issued a call for a total ban on POGO businesses, but the appearance on the front page again this week of the same shortsighted supporters of the POGO sector repeating the same fallacious arguments in an attempt to scare the country into not taking action compels a response.

In statements issued this week, Pagcor Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Alejandro Tengco, the Association of Service Providers and POGOs (Aspap), and Albay Rep. Joey Salceda, who chairs the House Committee on Ways and Means, again sought to slow the momentum toward a POGO ban with warnings of dire social and economic consequences if it is carried out. Tens of billions of pesos in revenues would be lost, they say, and tens of thousands of Filipinos would lose their jobs. It is unreasonable, they say, to punish an entire industry, and by extension, the well-being of the country at large, because of the violations committed by 'a few bad apples.' Pagcor, in particular, which is really the only entity that stands to lose something by the elimination of POGOs, even darkly warned that the atrocious level of criminal activity would increase in case of a ban because the operators would simply go underground.