DEMAND AND SUPPLY By Boo Chanco
The Philippine Star 04/09/2007
MACAU — One thing strikes you as soon as you land in this former Portuguese enclave is the smell of money. It is the same sort of sensation you get in Las Vegas, as you stroll around the strip. There is the excitement of winning and the foreboding of losing. But I am limiting myself to just looking around here. The only deadly sin I am ready to indulge here, as in Las Vegas, has to do with gluttony.
There is a gold rush sort of feel to this old former Portuguese outpost. My wife and I dropped in on the Wynn’s hotel and casino at five in the afternoon of Holy Thursday and I was amazed to see this rush of people in the lobby, all the way to the casino itself as if it was rush hour in a New York subway station... complete with the deafening cacophony of a multitude of Chairman Mao’s descendants simultaneously talking.
Thanks to Macau’s Catholic upbringing, Holy Thursday and Good Friday were no work holidays here. But I didn’t expect to see so many people out for a good time in the gaming tables. China must be doing real well because most of the crowd are Chinese with only a sprinkling of Westerners. And they take their gambling seriously. Anyone who left the gaming table to pee, will certainly lose his place and will have to fall in line again. I’ve been to Las Vegas a number of times and it seems the Chinese are a lot more serious about their gambling than the Americans.
The old Jesuits, Dominican and Franciscan padres who put up all those beautiful historic churches (which my wife and I visited on Good Friday) would probably cringe at what has become of Macau today — the sin city of the Far East. I understand Macau now turns over more money in gambling than Las Vegas and each gambling table is roughly 10 times more profitable than its Las Vegas equivalent.
One other thing you will quickly notice here is the omnipresent OFW. With all the feverish construction of new hotels and casinos, it is easy to see why there would be thousands of new jobs available for our work force in this booming Special Administrative Region of China. A Deutsche Bank study of Cotai, one such new development, notes that Macau only has a population of 450,000. "When the Cotai Strip is fully developed, the area itself can potentially employ over 120,000 people, according to Las Vegas Sands."
There goes the staff of Pagcor! There is supposed to be a gentleman’s agreement that prevents casinos in Macau from pirating staff from Pagcor, but given the higher wages and benefits here, I am sure those who want to work here will find a way around it. I heard Pagcor had lately been deluged with resignations and applications for early retirement from among the most experienced of its staff.
Pagcor’s loss will be the nation’s gain... more OFWs sending precious dollars home. I am told that right now, there are at least 15,000 immediate openings for gaming professionals in Macau. Since we are the most proximate nation with trained gaming professionals, we are a natural source of manpower to fill in the need.
Maybe Efraim Genuino should have been allowed to put up his Pagcor Academy after all. The Pagcor chief once upon a time proposed that such a training center be established to fill in the manpower needs of Pagcor itself. But it was opposed by the usual suspects who have problems with gambling being here at all. Now, it may be too late to satisfy Pagcor’s needs as it hemorrhages its staff to Macau casinos.
Come to think of it, perhaps we can still put up that Academy but on a larger scale — to train not just Pagcor’s manpower requirements but Macau’s and maybe Singapore’s. Like it or not, gambling’s in our culture and if we can make gaming professionals out of jueteng collectors, we would have given them a better ticket to break out of poverty.
Anyway, the new OFWs in Macau will find a lot of kababayans around to keep them from being too homesick. There are already about 35,000 Pinoys doing various things here from the usual hotel services to running a golf course and even as security personnel. They congregate at the Largo Do Senado or the Senado Square in the heart of historic Macau. They are not as many as our OFWs congregating in Hong Kong’s Statue Square but you hear enough Tagalog being spoken to feel right at home. Because of the business boom in Macau and a fast growing middle and a lot of expats, there is also a demand for household help and it may soon follow the experience in Hong Kong.
All the historical sites I visited over the last two days, notably the Churches, have Filipino security guards. The hotels, big and small, also have Pinoy security staff. Many of them are recent hires. Most of the ones we talked to have been here less than a year. The big hotels and casinos employ long-term Pinoy residents for security.
I asked them why there are so many of them there and I was told that their ability to communicate in English was their biggest selling point. As it turns out, even for security guards, it is important to be able to speak English. Our Ate Glue should be commended for ordering the DepEd to strengthen the teaching of English in the public school system. It is a skill our people need to help them take advantage of job opportunities abroad.
The other thing that came to my mind as I observed the goings on here is the possibility of working with Macau tourism authorities to offer a unique tourism package that includes gaming in Macau and doing other tourist activities in the Philippines. There isn’t much space to do anything else here other than gaming and eating.
If they offered packages to American and European tourists to include nature sports in the Philippines, that should help our own tourism efforts tremendously and give the long flight to Macau from Europe or America a little more reason to justify the trip. A western tourist who has already traveled 12 to 16 hours to get to our side of the world, will surely appreciate doing something else other than gambling over a holiday of from four to seven days. Think in terms of a Macau-Boracay package. Or a Macau-Clark-Subic package. Or a Macau-Cebu and or
Even a Chinese tourist will want to see something else, provided he is allowed by the Chinese government to go beyond
| The paramedic |
One day, at a casino buffet, a man suddenly called out, "My son’s choking! He swallowed a quarter! Help! Please, anyone! Help!"
A man from a nearby table stood up and announced that he was quite experienced at this sort of thing. He stepped over with almost no look of concern at all, wrapped his hands around the boy’s gonads, and squeezed. Out popped the quarter. The man then went back to his table as though nothing had happened.
"Thank you! Thank you!" the father cried. "Are you a paramedic?"
"No," replied the man. "I work for the Internal Revenue Service."
Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com
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