Macau (MNA) – An online database with information on people barred from entering casino gaming areas will be created and will be accessible to gaming operators, the Macau government told the members of the 1st standing committee of the Legislative Assembly (AL) this Tuesday currently evaluating a bill to change current casino floors entry regulations.
“According to the bill, authorities can provide information on the people barred from entering to gaming operators for better control, instead of the current method of sending confidential letters to operators […] So an online platform with password access will be created. This platform will have updated information on the excluded people and gaming operators can access it,” the committee chairman, Ho Ion Sang, said after the meeting.
However the government stated that information on gaming workers – which will be automatically barred from gaming floors if the new bill is passed – won’t be included in this database but only people who have been barred due to judicial decisions or that have requested their own exclusion.
The bill states that workers hired by the six gaming operators who engage in jobs related to gaming tables and machines, cashier counter, public relations, food & beverage, cleaning, security and supervision, would only be allowed to enter casinos on working days, the first three days of Lunar New Year and other authorised occasions such as for training.
Legislator Hon added only people working for gaming operators with the “required competences” or delegated by the companies will be able to consult this database.
The Office for Personal Data Protection (GPDP) was also said to have given permission for developing this database, with people included having to be notified of their inclusion.
The specific data that will be stored on the people excluded wasn’t defined by government representatives, with details to be provided in further meetings.
The committee members also inquired the government why it had increased the period to decide if will apply sanctions to someone that has been removed from a gaming area from three to five days, with the government responding that the due to human resources shortage it needed more time to deal with the exclusion process.
Under proposed changes, if someone is expelled from a casino floor, the Gaming Inspection and Co-ordination Bureau (DICJ) will have five days to decide what sanction will be implemented, with the person in question being barred from entering gaming areas during that period.
“As an example the government said that in a case of casino chips theft uncovered in casinos the process starts after someone files a complaint. According to the bill the DICJ has five days to start procedures to expel and bar this person from casino areas and this process takes time. The person is banned preventively from entering, then there can be an appeal, and then the DICJ will decide if a sanction is implemented,’ legislator Hon indicated.
The DICJ indicated that some 409 cases of people being removed from from gaming areas were registered, with some 177 cases seen in 2018 so far.
The government also suggested that in the future, people that voluntarily ask authorities to be barred from gaming floors be impeded from lifting the ban themselves.
Currently individuals can request to be barred from gaming areas, or family members of the person in question can request this exclusion, with the exclusion time varying from six months to two years.
Some 233 requests for exclusion from gaming floors were received by DICJ in the first half of this year, with 85.8 per cent being self-exclusion.
With the first round of discussions for the bill final draft concluded, the committee will now ask the government legal advisors to improve the bill, with works to resume after the end of the AL break on October 15.
