29 Jan 2024

The Gambling Authority (GA) reports about 510 000 cases of Batswana involved in illegal online gambling per month despite not having issued any operator licences locally.

Addressing the media in Gaborone recently, the authority’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Emolemo Kesitilwe said the occurrence of unlicensed gambling locally proved problematic and revealed an urgent need for public education before issuing licences for safe and censored gambling.

Mr Kesitilwe said the previous year calendar was, therefore, dedicated to public education on safe gambling across 100 villages nationwide.

Mr Kesitilwe said the authority had made significant strides in patnering with other regulators around the world to set up a safe gambling environment locally.

“Issuing out licences also helps in dealing with issues of illegal and underage gambling, and if controlled at both operator and public level it will be easier for the nation to do it responsibly,” he said.

Mr Kesitilwe said for the authority’s first strategic pillar, which focused on responsible gambling and rehabilitation GA embarked on a baseline study to assess the sector locally.

Notably, he said efforts were coupled with additional study which took into account the risk factors with a view to determine why people gamble, citing that they further reviewed the socio-economic impacts of gambling in Botswana.

In addition, Mr Kesitilwe said they assessed the contribution of gambling to the country’s economy with focus on mainly the casinos.

He reiterated that they had mastered the programme affiliated with casinos and did public education campaigns to ensure that all understood the difference between responsible and problem gambling.

Economically, with the 510  000 monthly online gamblers alluded to, Mr Kesitilwe said the country was losing out a lot, especially with exported jobs as the operator companies were not licensed in Botswana.

Therefore, he said licensing local companies would help in employment creation and tax accrual.

Given issues of addiction associated with gambling, Mr Kesitilwe said the authority was faced with using five percent contribution from casinos towards promoting responsible gambling.

He said this was part of law and already Botswana was doing well in that regard, citing that in some neighbouring countries the sector was run by an association and issues of excessive gambling were not regulated.

Mr Kesitilwe said already countries like Mauritius and United Kingdom had showed interests in coming to benchmark from the processes cultivated by the authority locally.

He said GA was part of the national risk assessment which sought to combat money laundering at casinos, and had played a pivotal role in developing policies and procedures for safe gambling at casinos.

These include setting limits to the amount of monies to be carried in to the casinos, as well as ensuring Know Your Customer process completion, he said.

Mr Kesitilwe said to date the authority was engaged in reviewing the gaming and gambling policy developed in 2002, with view to make the industry have a significant impact on the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

He added that a benchmark exercise had revealed that countries like Georgia and Malta had 25 per cent of their GDP emanating from the gaming and gambling industry.

Furthermore and targeting promoting responsible gambling, Mr Kesitilwe said soon the authority would be launching a self-help portal, which allowed people to self-exclude or maybe upload about a family member involved in problem gambling.

He said the development would incorporate cellphones which are not smart, citing that currently the authority was setting up a Call Centre under the number 19777.

“We are also at an advanced stage of introducing a Central Electronic Monitoring System (CEMS) which connects all operators having gambling machines. The CEMS is a requirement in the Gambling Act, one aspect which has positioned Botswana above the rest in terms of setting legislations,” he said.

Mr Kesitilwe said the development would also assist in monitoring the effects of problem gambling at any given point. ENDS