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War on gambling
(Kaieteur News) – When people don’t have enough money in their hands to meet their basic needs, they will seek any avenue that promises to help them close that deficit. When that avenue holds out the extra of going beyond assisting with basic expenses, then there is added incentive for those who are looking for a quick fix to see gambling as the answer to their situation. When people living in an oil rich country that consistently makes headlines across the developed world flock gambling dens in the hope of walking away richer, it says so much. It emphasizes the desperation of their condition, what oil wealth hasn’t done for them, and the reckless lengths they will go to find a solution, no matter temporary it proves to be.
There are those who are addicted to gambling, as some are to alcohol and other substances. There is the high-society set for whom gambling is a luxurious and even a prestigious, pastime. They can afford to lose huge amounts of money at the gambling table, or racetrack, or on a variety of sports, and walkaway without blinking an eye. They are that insulated from the ravages that gambling interest (or addiction) can wreak on a partner, an entire family, and on the gambler, whatever form that presence takes. Then there is another kind of gambler, one who searches for any opening that offers some faint hope that it will result in some money in the hand. Gamblers like these, and they can be both men and women, are the ones who are pushed by circumstances to believe that they can beat the odds, and come out of a gambling establishment as a winner.
The history of gambling is that for every winner, there is a huge company of losers. They are those citizens who cannot afford to lose, often those who have nothing left to lose. The casinos of Las Vegas and Monte Carlo have added a glamorous touch to gambling, making it cool, the thing to do. The same types of casinos, with their wide range of attractions, now proliferate in Guyana, and the problem is that they are not short of customers. The betting places are now not limited to hospitality establishments and other sanctioned outlets, but have sprung up all over Guyana. From the small rural villages to the bigger businesses where the lure of a big payday grabs many Guyanese by the throat and don’t let go of them. Single mothers now form part of the gambling crowd and, according to the government, it has now risen to the level of a national scourge. It is difficult, perhaps, for non-betting Guyanese to wrap their minds around that, but gambling’s irresistibility and damage now falls in the same category of domestic violence, in that it is a national scourge.
With those bloated from Guyana’s oil riches being such a small percentage of the population, there is only one conclusion left as to who are the citizens that make up the human elements in the gambling scourge, now at national proportions. Inevitability, all eyes are cast in the direction of the poor of Guyana. Those that the splash of oil riches, their own inherited wealth, have passed by, and left them scrambling due to the cramps that intensify due to their living in a rising, squeezing cost-of-living environment. In such situations, some sell themselves to help they and their families manage from the produce of a day’s (or night’s) work on the streets. Others sell themselves on the hope that when they roll the dice, make a selection, or push a button, that that would be the end of their troubles. It is a fool’s hope, a bigger fool’s dream, and part of the tragedy that citizens are compelled to this state of mind in a country boasted around the world as the newest oil paradise.
An oil paradise for the few who are favoured, no issues there. But an oil hell for Guyanese masses, who exist on their knees, and look to gambling to help them get on their feet. The government said that it is targeting gambling. It would be better to target the economic inequities pounding so many Guyanese.
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