Asking To Build Literacy Apart From Sanctions, Vice President On Online Gambling: This Is Very Dangerous

Vice President Ma'ruf Amin. (Personal Twitter)

JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin said solving the online gambling problem was not only strict sanctions but also literacy by building understanding in the community.

"This is very dangerous. So, we must continue to encourage anti-judicial education and we hope that there will be a deterrent effect in the future so that we don't become a gambling community," said the Vice President after reviewing the B3 waste treatment plant in Pasuruan Regency, East Java (East Java), Thursday, June 27, quoted from a statement from the Press Bureau of the Vice Presidential Secretariat via Antara.

The Vice President responded to the findings of the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) which stated that there were more than 1,000 people in the legislative environment, both in the House of Representatives (DPR), the Regional House of Representatives (DPRD) to the Secretariat General of the DPR and DPRD, who were entangled in online gambling.

During a hearing with Commission III of the DPR, Wednesday (26/6), PPATK Head Ivan Yustiavandana revealed that the circulation of money from online gambling transactions was not small, but reached hundreds of billions of rupiah.

The vice president also said that apart from being a religious prohibition, gambling also interferes with one's productivity.

"The gamblers are lazy, not creative, have no enthusiasm, this is very dangerous. If our society becomes a gambling community, it may be in other places where gambling is a rich person. Now we are poor people, there are already many victims of borrowing (online loans). There is a husband and wife divorced, there is a husband being burned because of borrowing, all kinds of things," said the vice president.

Thus, he said, the government sees the online gambling phenomenon as an emergency that must be handled immediately.

As a concrete commitment to overcome online gambling, the government has also formed a cross-agency task force to thoroughly investigate and provide a deterrent effect to all parties involved.

"The government has indeed considered this an emergency, therefore it must be handled seriously. So an integrated task force was formed, not by an agency that was previously only by for example from the Ministry of Communication and Information, from the police, but we integrated it into a coordinated step," he said.

Because, said the Vice President, the dangers of online gambling are extraordinary and also involve many groups. Not only young people, unemployment, but also to members of the DPR and so on.

"The Task Force is determined to take actions against all parties, in order, of course, we want to eliminate, at least that minimizes, reduces these (online gambling) roles. Otherwise this is dangerous and it will be done continuously, non-stop," said the Vice President.