Pritam Singh, Workers' Party member of parliament in Singapore, accused the country’s government of permitting lottery operators Singapore Pools and Singapore Turf Club to offer legal online gaming in order to “make more money,” reports The Straits Times.
In parliament on Monday, Singh raised questions about the September decision to exempt the two operators from the Remote Gambling Act. The MP said there had been what he called a “glaring lack of clarity” on the government’s plans to tackle “the scourge of online gambling”.
In response, Desmond Lee, senior minister of state for home affairs, called Singh’s comments “disturbing”.
Singh said: “Local gambling apps that have a stamp of approval by the government will attract people who have previously never gambled online. It may include many young people who may not relish queuing up at Toto outlets or going to the races at the Turf Club but may experiment with gambling for the first time from the privacy of their phones.”
Lee responded: “Our concern is that a total prohibition will only drive the problem further underground, making it harder to detect, with problems surfacing too late. Trends and observations show that. This broadly mirrors the approach that we have taken for terrestrial gambling.”
The debate was cut short as the parliamentary session ran out of time but the exchanges highlight the controversy surrounding the regulation (or not) of online gaming in Singapore.
Source: The Straits Times
