Short link: https://wp.me/paaccn-knb
By EDD K. USMAN / @edd1819 / @bluestar0910 / SDN — Science and Digital News
Short link: https://wp.me/paaccn-knb
(SDN) — Newly-appointed Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) Chairman Junie Evangelista Cua has enjoined Filipinos to support the agency’s fund-raising products.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. appointed Cua, a veteran lawmaker and ex-governor of Quirino province, to the PCSO. He took his oath from the President on July 5, along with other new appointees of the new administration.
He replaced the former PCSO chairperson and now Ad Interim General Manager Anselmo Simeon P. Pinili.
One of those the President swore in to office was former Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) commander Abdulghani “Gerry” Salapuddin of Basilan province as administrator and chairman of the Southern Philippines Development Authority (SPDA), a government agency that dates back to the old Marcos’ regime.
The younger Marcos is still in the process of completing the lineup of new officials who’ll serve under his administration after winning the May 9, 2022 presidential race decisively.
Cua was Quirino’s representative to the House of Representatives covering 20 years — 1987 to 1998 and 2001 to 2010 (source: Wikipedia). He filed hundreds of bills as principal author.
He was also multi-term governor of Quirino, Cagayan Valley.
As of press time he has not yet formally assumed office at the PCSO Headquarters along Shaw Boulevard, Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila. On the other hand, the agency has welcomed him through a post on the agency’s website (www.pcso.gov.ph).
The new PCSO chief sent a message to his fellow Filipinos, asking them for support.
“What I would like to request to our countrymen is, hopefully, to help our government, support in our own small way, for example in joining or buying products of the PCSO which we can’t consider destroying the moral fiber of the people, but instead, through it we are also helping those who really need among our countrymen,” said Cua, in a post by the Philippine Information Agency (PIA)-Quirino.
He was apparently referring to the gaming products of the PCSO, such as the six Lotto games, lotteries, sweepstakes, and ScratchIt cards from which every peso of revenue goes to Prize Fund, 55 centavos; Charity Fund, 30 centavos; and Operating Fund, 15 centavos. Multiply that by billions of pesos of revenue.
The Charity Fund is allocated for the agency’s various assistance programs and services for poor Filipinos.
Cua said the “whole picture of it is that if you beat or buy a PCSO product is you are helping your countrymen because it is the source of the assistance given to many Filipinos.”
As this developed, the PCSO produced another instant millionaire, a bettor who won Monday, July 18, Mega Lotto 6/45’s Php53.9-million jackpot.
The lucky punter, whose winning ticket the PCSO traced to a Lotto outlet in Las Piñas, Metro Manila, matched the 6/45 jackpot numbers of 06-17-40-45-39-13.
According to its mandate, the PCSO “is the principal government agency for raising and providing funds for health programs, medical assistance and services, and charities of national character.”
A self-sustaining government agency, the PCSO does not receive even a centavo of budget from the General Appropriations Act (GAA). It funds itself and its programs and services through its gaming products. (✓)