IT is now six months since the somewhat controversial chairman of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commission (BG&L), attorney-at-law Gordon Robinson, has demitted office and as far as can be determined, that regulatory body has been functioning in most areas effectively under the direction of his replacement Ms. Mae Tapper.
The appointment of Ms. Tapper took place almost without fanfare at all so this column certainly missed it and was unable to accord it the proper recognition. With the elevation of Miss Rose Campbell to the top post at Caymanas Track Ltd (CTL) it seems appropriate to make the point once again that there can no longer be a legitimate claim that the administration of the racing industry, regulation and promotion, is still exclusively a male domain.
The former executive chairman of the BG&L, in his relatively short stint in office, developed a reputation for a no-nonsense approach to his responsibilities. In fact he was quite aggressive in what at times seemed to be an over-zealous policy in terms of enforcing compliance from the bookmakers with respect to their revenue returns to the government coffers.
Effectively Robinson was able to create a new culture of timely compliance from all entities offering gaming to the public. In addition he breathed new life into BG&L's attempt to tackle the problem of illegal bookmaking, which is perceived to be a lucrative pastime for the perpetrators but an activity which create serious losses in revenue to the government as well as deprive the racing industry of significant income.
Naturally one of the solutions to the problem of illegal gaming is the provision of adequate legitimate betting facilities and this is where certain of the bookmakers may be having a problem with the BG&L. As I understand it there are a significant number of outstanding licence applications for new outlets that are taking an extraordinarily long time to be processed.
As far as I know with CTL operating some seventy off track stations and the bookmakers having over 600 outlets islandwide saturation point has certainly not been reached by any means. It would therefore seem to me that the BG&L, if the complaints are justified, needs to take a look at its licencing procedures to expediate the processing of applications.
Incidentally I have tried calling the BG&L to clarify this matter but was unsuccessful so I will have to return to this subject at a later date. In the meantime whilst the BG&L continues to perform reasonably well in its regulatory functions there is a tremendous amount of work to be done on a continuous basis to contain illegal gaming. This problem will not go away and in any event there will never be a total solution. But the BG&L must continue to find resources to address the situation.
In its monitoring role of the bookmakers the BG&L, over the years, has had the sort of relationship which has ranged from luke-warm to very cold but whilst there have been problems, both entities have now developed a grudging respect for each other. One expects to see, though, co-operation between them improving as time goes by.
By Cliff Williams,
Contributor
