Briefs | Gaming employees call for salary increase

Yesterday morning, the Gaming Employee Advance Association visited the government headquarters to call for a salary increase for gaming employees. The group hopes the government will urge casinos to issue said raise. In particular, the association wants gaming companies to increase salaries in line with the salary growth of civil servants. The association also suggested the government establish a fund in order to loan money to gaming employees who wish to start their own businesses. In addition, they called upon gaming companies to not increase employees’ workloads.

PSP clarifies online rumor

A picture posted online was believed to show a police officer hiding in the grass while inspecting vehicles. However, the Public Security Police Force (PSP) has denied that this is what the photo depicts. According to a report by TDM, the Public Relations Officer of PSP, Lai In Hong, clarified that the person in the picture is not a PSP officer. Regarding another online picture which showed a police officer inspecting vehicles nearby a zebra crossing, Lai noted that this is one of the ways in which police authority officers inspect cars and pedestrians, and that they normally wear recognizable uniforms while doing so. According to the most recent PSP data, in 2017, PSP ticketed and prosecuted a total of 1,677 cases related to vehicles which did not give priority to pedestrians using a zebra crossing. In addition, there were 1,150 cases of pedestrians prosecuted for jaywalking.

Foreign reserves up 3.1 percent

The Monetary Authority of Macao announced in a statement yesterday that the preliminary estimate of the city’s foreign exchange reserves amounted to MOP162.3 billion (USD20.17 billion) at the end of December 2017. This is an increase of 3.1 percent from the revised value of MOP157.4 billion for the previous month, and represents 11 times the currency in circulation at the end of November. The statement also noted that the trade-weighted effective exchange rate index for the pataca dropped 0.53 points month-on-month in December. As such, the exchange rate of the pataca declined against the currencies of Macau’s major trading partners.