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Friday, March 29, 2024
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CASINO COMMISSION GRAPPLING WITH MANDATES

The V.I. Casino Control Commission is still smoothing out the rough spots of the Casino Control Act some five years after the body came into its existence and almost a year into overseeing the territory’s first casino.
As far as the commission’s efforts to address gambling addiction in the community goes, Commissioner Lloyd McAlpin said he hasn’t been able to get the Responsible Gaming Task Force "in full swing." The task force, called for under the Casino Act, is made up of McAlpin, government mental health experts and individuals from the private sector. But two of those people, including the representative from the Divi Carina Bay Resort and Casino, have withdrawn.
The lack of participation, McAlpin said, is troubling.
"The norm with organizations around here is until something becomes a chronic, we tend to lay back," he said.
Meanwhile, personnel issues at the Divi hotel and casino as well as the overall tourism industry were main issues at the commission’s meeting on Wednesday. Currently there are 181 employees working in the hotel, of which 140 are "bona-fide" Virgin Islanders, defined as individuals born in the territory or living here for at least five years.
In the casino, there are 273 employees, 133 bona-fide residents and 92 non-residents. The Casino Act mandates that at the end of its first year of operation at least 65 percent of a casino-hotel’s workforce be local residents. By the second year, 75 percent of the employees must be bona-fide Virgin Islanders. And at the end of the third year and thereafter, 90 percent must be.
As the Divi Carina Bay Resort and Casino enters its second year, it has 68 percent bona-fide residents at work.
"Even though they are basically on the average, there needs to be a little more scrutiny on their hiring practices" regarding the act, McAlpin said, adding that he and commission Chairwoman Eileen Petersen were disheartened by the scarcity of locals in supervisory and advanced positions. McAlpin said discussions with Divi management have been held concerning a decrease in local hiring and that advertisements for positions have been displayed in local media.
Still, he said Divi is having difficulty finding employees for dealer and technical casino positions.
"Divi has basically had to import employees to fill these vacant positions," McAlpin said.
Petersen also noted that the Casino Act mandates that in the second full year of a hotel-casino’s existence, its employees must have earned a vocational training certificate or a high school diploma through the V.I. Hospitality Training Institute. The only problem, she pointed out, was that no such institute exists.
"If there is no hospitality management school, how can this act be implemented," Petersen said. "Are these employees going to be fined if they don’t have (certificates)?"
Such a school was opened at the last moment in October 1999, just prior to the opening of the Divi casino, in order to train casino dealers.
But the school’s seven-member board, which consists of the commissioners of Education and Tourism, the president of the University of the Virgin Islands and four members appointed by the governor, is also inactive. In fact, the four appointed positions have been vacant since June, when they expired.
"From that point on, the Virgin Islands Hospitality Training Institute has been inactive, mostly due to inadequate funding," said Imelda Dizon, one of three casino control commissioners. "We need it badly. We need people to be trained in all aspects of the tourism industry."
Meanwhile, Petersen, a former Territorial Court judge, said she has already been approached by individuals who run youth job training programs about the percentage of funds generated from gambling taxes that are supposed to be earmarked for such activities in the Casino Act. Again, however, she said the act is "vague" about how the process is to work.
"I am unable to ascertain which government agency gets funds and obtains loans for initial funding," she said.
The Casino Act, Petersen said, "includes a lot of little hidden gems" that an already overtaxed amd underfunded staff has to uncover on a daily basis.
"It certainly stretches this commission’s creativity," she said.

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