'Limit impact of gambling'

2003-06-22 18:17

Cape Town - Western Cape premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk has called on the government and the gambling industry to do more to limit the social impact of gambling.

In a prepared speech to a New National Party meeting in Manenberg, Cape Town on Sunday, he suggested a comprehensive review of gambling legislation.

"We must ensure that there is not a proliferation of gambling as an unintended consequence of well-intentioned regulations designed to control this sector.

"In the same way that tobacco and alcohol are not positive forces in our communities, gambling is at best unhelpful and at worst a force for social destruction in South Africa and the Western Cape."

Gambling must remain legal

The NNP leader said, however, that his party believed that, like the choice to drink and smoke, gambling should remain a legal choice, to be made by informed adults.

There was no doubt that gambling in had become a vice, he said.

It had been estimated that in one small rural Western Cape town last year, R1.5m was spent in one month alone on lottery tickets, while residents of another larger town spent as much as R2.5m a month.

Households now spent five times more on gambling in a year than on books.

A recent study had shown more than 62% of unemployed South Africans played the Lotto and more than 67% of individuals who earned less than R500 a month gambled in some way.

"So it is quite clear that we have a situation at hand where many households are willing to sacrifice their children's next meal for the odd chance to strike it lucky.

"This was never the intention of the legislation which made gambling legal in South Africa," he said.

Van Schalkwyk added that the legal gambling sector's contribution to the economy and to job creation should be acknowledged.

The industry had contributed more than R133m from taxes, licence fees and confiscated money in the past year, he said.

- SAPA