(Letter to Editor) – There are a lot of Burmese people who have lost almost everything they have in trying to make quick money in the popular–but illegal–2-digit lottery. The winning numbers in this lottery are taken daily from the closing indexes of two Thai stock exchanges, usually broadcast on Thai TV channel 9 (popularly known in Burma as the eye channel).
The closing last decimal of the SET index is the first digit of the winning number. The number in the last place before the decimal point of the ‘SET Value’ is the second digit of the two winning numbers.
Many families are broken when gamblers lose, as most do. Some desperate people even commit murders. Many people, well-off and poor, have lost everything in gambling on the two-digit lottery. Some become homeless vagabonds and drifters after losing all their property and belongings in the lottery.
Everybody knows the danger of the illegal lottery, but they are blindly attracted to it because of poverty and unemployment. Many see the lottery as the easiest way to make a quick buck and wistfully dream of escaping from their daily hardship and suffering. They fail to see that they can end up in the quicksand of the lottery, losing their material possessions and their soul.
Our government turns a blind eye to this lottery. Maybe it wants the people to be distracted from politics. I really wonder if the government bothers to think about the evils of this lottery and how it harms the people? Or does it simply have no interest in these things?
I hope one day the government does its job, and the two-digit lottery disappears from Burma.
