Noutăți de operator

Noua Zeelandă – Fundația pentru jocuri de noroc cu probleme strigă rău în timp ce Ministerul Sănătății caută în altă parte

New Zealand’s Problem Gambling Foundation is being forced to shut its doors after losing government funding because it was vociferous in its opposition to the convention centre for pokies deal, according to Labour’s Internal Affairs spokesperson Trevor Mallard.

SkyCity va cheltui 363.5 milioane USD pentru construirea centrului de conferințe și va primi 230 de sloturi suplimentare celor 1,647 existente, împreună cu 40 de mese noi, ceea ce duce la masa totală la 150, precum și până la 240 de jucători multiplu. Acordul va crește sloturile la nivel de țară cu 8.2% și mesele cu 20%.
“Staff will this morning be told the Foundation has lost its Ministry of Health funding and will close its 12 offices nationwide,” Mr. Mallard informed. “The Foundation, which has counselled about 25,000 people over the past 20 years, will also end its temporary services in 11 other locations. It’s funding will end in July and most of the Foundation’s staff are expected to lose their jobs. It will only be funded to provide particular services to the Asian community. The Foundation has made itself particularly unpopular with the Government around the SkyCity convention

centre deal. This decision is a blatant attempt by the Government to silence its critics.”

Forecasts by the New Zealand Health Ministry claim that New Zealanders will gamble more over the next few years with casino spend set to grow by 2.3 per cent by 2016. The study also forecasts that sports betting through the Totalisator Agency Board will grow by 6.6 per cent by 2016 whilst spend on lottery games will grow by eight per cent. The study forecasts that spend on machine games in pubs and clubs, the largest sector of the gambling market, will fall slightly over the next three years from US$854m in 2012 to US$849m in 2016.

Mr. Mallard added: “The Ministry of Health has said it has received a ‘superior contract bid’ but as the Foundation is the largest provider of problem gambling services in Australasia, it is hard to imagine a more qualified organisation to do this work. The Government’s deal with SkyCity stinks and the public knows it. An additional 350 pokie machines in Auckland will cause significant harm to the community. The Problem Gambling Foundation has spoken out about the dangers of this deal and are now paying the price. Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne and the Ministry of Health need to explain the reasons for this outrageous decision.”

Ca parte a acordului, SkyCity va introduce noi măsuri de prevenire a jocurilor de noroc cu probleme cu metode mai bune de identificare a potențialilor jucători cu probleme, sisteme voluntare de pre-angajare pentru a limita petrecerea sau timpul de joacă și dublarea numărului de specialiști în responsabilitatea gazdei.

În prezent, în Noua Zeelandă, există 2,800 de aparate de joc și 200 de mese de joc, cu peste 1,600 de aparate și peste 100 de mese la SkyCity Auckland.

Health Ministry Group Manager Rod Bartling said however: “The ministry can confirm that it has informed the Problem Gambling Foundation that it does not intend to renew its national contract to prevent and reduce gambling harm. The process to re-tender the contracts for these services was an open contestable tender process. The evaluation panel deciding on the tender comprised six members – three internal ministry staff and three external evaluators from the Department of Internal Affairs, the Health Promotion Agency and a Pacific health consultant. The ministry also asked Pricewaterhouse to independently review the procurement process and this confirmed the ministry’s processes followed accepted good practice.”

Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne added: “This review had been on the cards for some

years prior to this, as the development of the sector has to a large extent been undertaken in an ad hoc manner, with duplication of services from national providers simply not achieving best value for money that clients of services are entitled to expect.”