Pangasinan cops to burn 100 ‘ameneng’ machines

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan — To show its resolve in ridding the province of ameneng, considered the poor man’s slot machine, the provincial police command will burn today about 100 such machines seized from across the province.

Superintendent Noli Taliño, provincial police intelligence officer whom Senior Superintendent Alan Purisima, provincial police director, has designated as action man in the anti-video karera drive, said 50 of the machines to be destroyed were confiscated by the Intelligence Division and the Special Operations Group.

The rest of the machines were seized by the city and municipal police units.

"This is our way of showing to the public that we are sensitive to their sentiments and that we immediately acted on their complaints," Taliño told The STAR.

He said Purisima issued a memorandum to all local police chiefs to seize such illegal gambling machines after no less than Gov. Victor Agbayani had directed him to clamp down on ameneng.

Even Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, a known anti-gambling crusader, called the attention of the police on the proliferation of these gambling machines after he had received complaints from parents and the religious sector that ameneng was thriving near schools and even churches.

Parents bewailed that their children were getting hooked on ameneng. By inserting a P1 coin, a winner gets several coins from the machine if he chooses the right combination of fruits and horses.

Antonio Villar Jr., undersecretary of local governance under the Office of the President, also joined the clamor for a stop to this form of illegal gambling, which, he said, "is worse than jueteng because the (children are the ones) victimized."

Certain local officials are said to be behind the operations of ameneng, which surged following the anti-jueteng crackdown.