CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- Pampanga Rep. Carmelo Lazatin has sought an investigation on the supposed income losses of local governments from the operations of the government-run small town lottery (STL) in the country.

Lazatin sought the investigation after citing “big discrepancies” between past daily revenues of the illegal numbers game “jueteng” and the current gross sales of STL.

“For instance in Angeles City, the police reported that jueteng used to rake in P3 million a day. In Pampanga, it is P20 million daily. Hindi ganun ang pumapasok ngayon (Those amounts are not coming in now [to the PCSO coffers]),” Lazatin, a former mayor of Angeles City, told the Inquirer in a telephone interview on Friday.

He said the STL agent in Angeles, Lake Tahoe Gaming and Amusement Corp., declared a revenue of P6.015 million for December 2007. It reported P5.67 million and P5.875 million in January and February 2008.

Suncove Corp., the STL agent in Pampanga, declared gross sales of P4.077 million in Mabalacat in December 2007 and P4.171 million in Magalang in January 2008.

“Their amounts are very small,” said Lazatin, vice chair of the House committee on games and amusement.

In the May 5 hearing of the committee, Lazatin asked Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office chair Sergio Valencia to provide a report on revenues made by the agency from STL operations.

“We need to check on the accounting of the revenues to make sure that PCSO is receiving what is rightfully due to it, which will also result in more funding for basic and social services being provided by the agency and the local governments that are [hosting] STL operations,” Lazatin said in a statement.

He said while he sought an investigation on STL revenues, he told Valencia that the game was “successfully meeting its objective of eliminating jueteng and providing livelihood to displaced cobradores (bet collectors).”

PCSO, the franchise holder, introduced STL in February 2006. Jueteng has been around in Luzon for almost 50 years and had stirred controversies for elected officials, as well as police and military officials.

The jueteng payoff scandal in 2000 led to the ouster of former President Joseph Estrada in January 2001.