BARELY a year after a concerted crackdown on cyber cafés in a bid to curb online gambling was concluded with trumpeted success this social scourge is making a comeback in a different form.
Now these gambling outlets come in the guise of cyber games centres which offer what appear to be innocent fun games purportedly for leisure.
One of the most popular games in these cyber games centres is the ‘ monkey game’ or ‘main kerak’ as it is called in local Malay.
Apparently the programme was designed to camouflage gambling as a simple game to pass away the time.
The modus operandi is simple: you pay a deposit to play the game where you manoeuvre the monkey to collect points and if you fail your credit will dwindle.
The game ends when your credit runs out and if you stop playing having accumulated some points you can change your points for cash.
Gambling in the form of ‘main kerak’ or other similar games has become very popular and many people including the youths are hooked to it.
This trend is evidenced by the mushrooming games centres all over the state even in rural villages as we drift back to square one in the fight against cyber gambling.
This growing social ill has caught the attention of Assistant Minister of Youth Development Datuk Abdul Karim Hamzah who rang the alarm bells on the danger it is posing to our society last Friday.
Abdul Karim did not mince his words when he took local councils and the police to task for allowing cyber games centres to mushroom in the state saying, “They should not close their eyes to vices operating right under their noses.”
It was a brave statement indeed and Abdul Karim who is also the Sebuyau assemblyman must be lauded for standing up against the inaction by the enforcement authorities in curbing the spread of gambling in games centres.
However, to be fair to the police their hands are tied if these centres were allowed to operate by the local councils and no reports were made against them.
This does not mean the police could not do anything about gambling in these centres as they could go undercover to check if there was any gambling in there although there is hardly any need to do so as gambling in cyber games centres is an open secret.
It is fair to say the authority most at fault in allowing cyber games centres to spring up seemingly at will is the local councils.
It is difficult to understand why so many permits were given to turn shops and other business premises into cyber games cafes without the councils checking on their real activities.
The local authorities must implement measures to curb the growth of cyber games centres in the state.
Let us hope Abdul Karim’s clarion call on this social menace catches the ear of Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Adenan Satem and prompt him to focus on cyber cafes in his next ‘war’.