Marco Carvalho
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Macau’s gaming companies have been facing financial hardship, but the crisis didn’t hinder the corporate social responsibility strategies of the SAR gaming operators, judging by the initiatives recently promoted by local operators such as SJM Resorts or the MGM Macau.
Earlier in the week, Sociedade de Jogos de Macau (SJM) awarded a total of 34 new scholarships to children and relatives of employees of the gaming operator, now led by Daisy Ho.
The company also announced the renewal of the 24 scholarships it has awarded since 2017. Each of the scholarship holders will receive an annual allocation of 20,000 patacas until they complete their university studies. SJM also awarded an additional bonus of 5,000 patacas to the students that obtained the best academic performance during the last academic year.
In the end of July, MGM Macau announced the launch of a new “Dementia Care Program,” aimed at people that suffering from dementia and other mental health issues.
The initiative, launched in collaboration with Caritas and other community-based associations, provides for the organization of local tours for elderly people who have been diagnosed with dementia. The initiative is also aimed at family members, caregivers and social workers who work with people suffering from mental illness. Under the new “Dementia Care Program,” MGM Macau will also compile a dementia guidebook and promote other community activities to provide the support dementia patients need. The objective of the program is to raise public awareness so that patients with Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia “are thoroughly accepted and understood by the society.”
The six gaming concessionaires are required by law to promote solidarity practices and develop corporate social responsibility strategies, but Father Luís Sequeira claims that the benefits that operators promote do not compensate all the harm they create: “As a priest and as a man, my perspective is that this strategy of corporate social responsibility does not make up for the way people have their souls destroyed. A gambler, be it a man or a woman, falls prey to a dependency and, therefore, to an addiction. This addiction, I would say, deserves compassion. The second aspect is related to the sort of problems that gambling brings to families. I don’t know any one who has managed to deal with this addiction at home,” Father Sequeira told O Clarim.
The Jesuit priest, who saw the local gaming industry grow and reach an international magnitude, believes that gaming concessionaires are making an effort, albeit unsuccessfully, to clean up their image : “I look at the problem as it is and I feel sorry for all of this, although I understand that there is an illusory effort to help society. It’s true that the gaming industry makes an effort in this regard. I recognize that, but it seems to me that they could be more generous. They end up doing only what the law says they must do,” Sequeira claims. “The gaming industry is an industry that survives on the exploitation of human weakness and that is, very concretely, at the origin of addictions, obsessions and compulsivity. It’s very difficult to prefigure a solution that escapes this spectrum,” the former Superior of the Jesuits in Macau says.
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