Gambling – disease that attracts and leaves people to its mercy

Gambling is a deadly disease. You can drink as much as you like, chase after women as much as you like, it all passes by, but gambling stays for good,” said a citizen of Skopje, worried about his son, who, as he admits, spent most of his time in casinos and sports betting offices. He himself, when he was young, tried his luck many times in these games, but at the end he did not win anything. Now he regrets the time he wasted, and the money he has spent. He is mostly feels sorry for his son, hoping that he will know when to hit the brakes and listen to his father’s words. According to his own experience, he says everything is set beforehand, that games of chance were created to attract you, make you dependent, and at the end leave you to their mercy.

“Everything is set beforehand, you win, you lose, then you win again, and then lose again. It’s automatic, it’s programmed, it lets you win just to attract you, but then it takes your win back. One keeps thinking “I will win my prize back, I will win this time,” but it doesn’t happen. I have many examples, people who have ruined their families, left their wives, and sold the houses for that damn gambling,” says the concerned parent.

He says that games of chance should be prohibited or moved far away, not be close to populated areas or schools.

“These games should be where they are not inhabited, where there are no people. For example, I was in Gevgelija, on the border where the casino is. People with chariots are gambling, but not in the center. Bets should be on the periphery, who wants to let the car come on and let it go, he thinks.

However, Skopje citizen Zoran Vanevski says that if games of chance were to be moved outside the city, this business will be ruined, which is not good because thousands of people will lose their jobs.

“If they are moved out of the city at a distance of five kilometers from populated areas, I think that they will begin to lose a lot of money, it will not be as it is now. It’s not good for the employees. There are sports betting offices that have about a thousand employees, imagine if 5-6 sports betting offices start firing workers, it will be major social disaster. They should be left here, in one place, and not at a distance of five to six kilometers as they say,” said Zoran Vanevski.

Stojance Temelkov is one of those who were left without a job four years ago. He worked at the Will Hill betting office, but after it was shut down he and 350 other people who worked there were left without any income. Temelkov is against the closing of casinos and betting offices. According to him, this was the state will lose as well. He did not want to comment on the reason why Will Hill betting office closed for business, but he only said that it was unnecessarily shut down.

“I worked in a sports betting office that was shut down and 350 people were left out of work. They are the ones that pay taxes to the state. Those who want to bet will continue to do it online, and the money will go to foreign companies. While here, 20 percent of their win goes for the state, for taxes, for rent, because rents are very expensive. It should only be limited, it should be seen as fun, and not for people to borrow and go bankrupt because of it,” Temelkov said.

Another citizen says that games of chance should be controlled by inspection bodies.

“I think they should be shut down, or at least controlled a little bit more by the state inspection bodies. As I see it, it looks like they have too much freedom, it seems t that there are all kinds of possibilities for mismanagement and manipulation. Very often such betting offices are launched in a certain place because their owners count on the hope of the people living in that environment. Because of this, the authorities must take care that these games of chance are organized properly, so that they won’t affect younger generations in a negative way,” Dragi Stojkovski said.

The data suggests that the betting offices and casinos have made about 1.4 billion euros in the last five years. That’s income, and the profit is 56.5 million euros. A six-year license for a slot machine club costs 78.750 euros, while for a casino the license costs 600 thousand euros. A three-year license for a sports betting office costs 105 thousand euros.

Following Albania’s example, yesterday Kosovo joined the countries that banned games of chance in the next 10 years. This step made by the government in Pristina was a result of the two murders that took place in two gambling houses last week.

“We are implementing the request of the Parliament. The request was for the Government to ban all types of gambling in the next 10 years, as well as all games of chance,” said Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj. The next step is to submit the decision within 30 days to the Parliament, and then its adoption and entry into force. As for North Macedonia, the draft law proposed by DUI – for casinos and betting offices to be moved at least 500 meters away from educational institutions – has been in parliamentary procedure for the last eight months. To see where the procedure for this draft law, Nezavisen Vesnik/Independent daily newspaper tried to get in touch with the coordinator of the DUI parliamentary group, Ejup Alimi, but failed to get an answer.

Armend Murseli