In an intv earlier this year, I actually supported the casino issue for the big picture of the revenue that it will generate. One member of the panel who was supposed to be just listening to by viewpoints was rather taken back, one part maybe to my being a "tudung-girl" (but I started off with a disclaimer that personally as a Muslim of course I am not for gambling) and one part to his personal views. But knowing teh governemnt as well as I could possibly have, I was confident that they would be checks in place to curb the social problem... I mean, our country made chewing gum illegal, for goodness sake!

Under the framework, a National Council on Gambling will be set up in the second
half of the year to advise the MCYS on public education as well as assess the effectiveness of treatment, counselling and support programmes to tackle problem
gambling.

The Ministry will start public education programmes in July this year to raise awareness on addictive gambling as well as publicise community resources and help services available.

Social workers at the Family Service Centres as well as staff at Community Development Councils will be trained to identify compulsive gamblers and refer them to the Community Addictions Management Programme (CAMP) for treatment.

The less serious cases will be referred to selected Family Service Centres and social agencies for counselling and support.

Members of the public who wish to have more information about compulsive gambling may check CAMP's website at www.camp.org.sg, or call 63892387/89.

The helpline number for Family Service Centres is 1800-8380100.

In addition to the national framework, the MCYS says, stringent social safeguards for casinos will be put in place.

These include a casino entry levy of $100 per day or $2,000 a year for membership for all citizens and permanent residents.

Provisions have also been put in place to exclude certain groups of local residents from casino premises.

For example, spouses and family members will be empowered to exclude persons with gambling problems.

Persons on publicly-funded social assistance programmes, bankrupts and those with poor credit record will not be allowed in the casinos.

The casino operators will also not be allowed to accept credit cards and cheques from local residents or to extend credit to local residents.

MCYS will work with the Ministry of Home Affairs, which will set up a casino regulatory agency, to ensure the strict enforcement of all the safeguards.

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But sometimes, it just sound so "cartoony" the lengths the goverment go to to curb this and that... We are going to have a National Council on Gambling??? But the casino-people must be having some fierce database system that they would be able to tell whether a patron is under financial assistance/is a bankrupt/has bad credit... or else, are they going to have like a biometric system and scan through whether your face is similiar to one of those they have on their "(un)Wanted" roll??? Or would you have to sign some declaration form (similar to those SARS forms eg. "Have you visited anyone from TTSH in the last 14 days?") to say that you are have none of those undesired factors of a casino-patron??