Budi Gunawan Calls 80,000 Online Gambling Players Children Under 10 Years Old

Illustration - Online Gambling (Photo: Doc Antara)

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Political and Security Affairs (Menko Polkam) Budi Gunawan estimates that the number of online gambling players in Indonesia will reach 8.8 million, the majority of which come from the lower middle class.

Then 97,000 members of the TNI-Polri, 1.9 million private employees, and 80,000 online gambling players under the age of 10.

"This figure is predicted to continue to grow if we do not make massive efforts to eradicate online gambling," he said at a press conference on the achievement of the online gambling eradication desk and cybersecurity desk and data protection, Thursday, November 21.

Budi said that the massive number of online gambling players was due to information from cyber security.

Still, he said, online gambling can trigger endorphins which make the players feel happy and happy when they win one online gambling.

In fact, continued Budi Gunawan, the victory has been regulated by online gambling operators so that players make more deposits and when the deposit is large, players will certainly lose and lose money.

Therefore, Budi Gunawan said that there were quite difficulties in eradicating online gambling (judol) so that the government would be more aggressive in eradicating it.

Budi Gunawan said the government would continue to cooperate with technology platforms and internet service providers to block systematically.

"First, the joint desk will cooperate with technology platforms and internet service providers to carry out systematic blocking," he said.

In addition, Budi Gunawan said the government would continue to take legal action and trace the flow of online gambling finance and involve coordination of cross-border laws.

"Secondly, the joint desk will also continue to enforce the law and trace the flow of online gambling finance. We will seek cross-border legal coordination by targeting money laundering activities to facilitate prosecution," he explained.

The next step, Budi Gunawan said that all relevant ministries and institutions would massively conduct campaigns and education to the public about the dangers of online gambling that harm the economy.

"That online slots or gambling are fraud, people have been deceived by operators, people are given the hope of winning in online gambling games even though the online gambling program has been set so that people will lose in the end, they will lose and cannot withdraw their money," he said.

As for the cyber security desk and data protection, Budi Gunawan said that there are two focuses currently being worked on by two leading sectors, namely the Ministry of Digital Communication and BSSN.

Budi Gunawan conveyed that the first focus was to strengthen the security of government-owned websites including local governments and educational institutions.

"The second focus is accelerating the completion of the recovery or recovery of the temporary national data center or PDNS from both infrastructure and data recovery to support the digital-based public as directed by the president," he explained.