Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), UK
March 8 2007
Teen Gamblers Racking Up Debts
The lure of easy money is tempting Armenian youngsters into the
capital’s betting shops.
By Karine Asatrian in Yerevan (CRS N0. 382 08-Mar-07)
Two teenage boys walk into a betting shop on the central street in
Yerevan and begin studying forms on a table covered with information
about upcoming football matches.
After a half-hour discussion, they mark their bets, pay at the cash
desk and leave. They have bet 1,000 drams – about two US dollars – in
hope of winning five times that amount.
`We hope to win something,’ said Vahagn, a football fan and at
16-years-old already a regular gambler.
There are several hundred betting shops in Armenia. By law, they are
not supposed to accept bets from under-18s and will lose their
license or face a fine if they do. But a visit to several in the city
centre suggests under-age gambling is common in Yerevan and that
teens are wagering and often losing large amounts.
Yerevan’s bookies open around noon, and the schoolchildren start to
arrive after classes. Most of the teenagers IWPR spoke to said they
were doing badly at school.
Fifteen-year-old Artak began gambling two years ago and has since run
up debts of 500,000 drams, some 1,400 dollars.
Like many gamblers, Artak started off well, winning up to 10 times
his initial wager. Then he started to lose and became obsessed with
where he would find money.
First he pawned his mobile phone, and then staff in one betting shop
gave him credit. When his debts got too high, Artak turned to his
parents. They pawned their television, video camera and jewellery,
but it still wasn’t enough.
Artak eventually earned enough money to reclaim his parents’
possessions, but rather than do that he headed for the betting shop
instead.
Asked when he would stop gambling, Artak said, `When I win enough
money to cover my debts and buy myself a good phone and a gold
chain.’
Karen is now 16, but was 14 when he started gambling. A keen football
fan, he felt he could predict the outcome of games. `At first I
almost always won, but then I began to lose,’ he said.
He owes 50,000 drams and paid off an earlier debt by stealing money
from his parents. He was caught and punished by them but says it made
no difference.
`Punishment and advice from my parents don’t help me any more,’ said
Karen. `I don’t know whether I’ll ever rid myself of this obsession.’
Some start even younger than Karen.
Residents of a Yerevan apartment block were concerned to see an
ambulance arrive for their neighbour, Marietta, who had always been
in good health. She developed heart problems when she discovered that
her 13-year-old son Vardan was a compulsive gambler.
It was a classmate of Vardan’s who told her that her son was making
money by betting on the outcome of football matches. She went looking
for him after classes and discovered him in a betting shop.
`Every day I found that money was disappearing from the house,’
Marietta told IWPR. `It didn’t occur to me to suspect Vardan. I
suspected everyone but him.’
Marietta gave up her job to try to cure her son of his addiction. At
first it was slow going, but she bought him a computer and says she
has managed to divert his mania for gambling into one for computer
games.
But parents have other ways of fighting back. Armenian law says
transactions carried out by minors under 14 are not legal. `Parents
can go to court any time, have the transaction declared illegal and
get back the money their children staked,’ said lawyer Karen
Tumanian.
There are some who say the authorities should be intervening more
directly.
Child psychologist Ruben Poghosian accuses the government of doing
nothing to fight Armenia’s teenage gambling problem. He says betting
shops are too easily accessible and `the children see that anyone can
make money there’.
`It’s also the thrill of gambling,’ said Poghosian. `It’s a trap
which even adults find hard to resist.’
He says gambling is part of a wider social problem and believes
teenagers need to find other ways of earning money- no easy task in
present-day Armenia. `Find them a distraction which is thrilling and
will bring a child a great deal of pleasure,’ he advised, suggesting
that they take part in sport themselves rather than gambling on it.
But with pawnshops sustaining the young gamblers by readily accepting
their valuables including mobile phones, diverting teenagers’
attention from gambling could be difficult.
`We don’t give out money to children for pawned items,’ said a worker
at a pawnshop in the Shengavit district of Yerevan – even though
several teenagers said that they had pawned their telephones there.
Meanwhile, the betting shops themselves deny any responsibility for
the problem.
Gagik Boyajian, executive director of the Vivaro betting agency, told
IWPR that his staff had been told `not once, not twice but dozens of
times’ not to accept bets from underage punters and that therefore
their `conscience is clean’.
`How can we check whether they are 18 or not? Should we ask for their
passport every time?’ said Boyajian.
As for the finance ministry, it told IWPR that if betting shops are
found accepting bets from teenagers they could be fined up to 100,000
drams, around 280 dollars.
But this seems a small deterrent compared with the large amounts the
gambling shops are making from their hundreds of underage clients.
Karine Asatrian is a reporter with A1+ television in Yerevan.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress