Our vision is that all those who choose to gamble are able to do so responsibly, and without harming themselves or others. To achieve this outcome,
i. The nature of betting-related harm, and its effects on individuals, children, families, friends and communities, is well understood.
ii. There is a similarly good understanding of the personal and social determinants of betting-related harm.
iii. Regulatory, educational, physical and social environments all encourage players’ to be responsible.
iv. Reliable means exist to identify individuals who may be betting harmfully.
v. Effective steps are being taken to reduce or mitigate betting-related harm through well-developed, tested intervention and treatment strategies.
vi. Good industry data are available about all forms of betting, freely shared with those with a legitimate interest, restricted only by reasonable constraints related to commercial confidentiality.
vii. Effective information, advice and treatment are available within reasonable time frames to all those in need of help with their betting, and to their families, friends and others affected by their betting.
viii. In addition to operators, a wide range of organizations and agencies in the public and private sectors accept their responsibility to use their expertise and resources to inhibit harmful betting or to mitigate its effects.
ix. The issue of responsibility in betting is approached by all who have a stake in its availability and impact in a balanced, supportive and open-minded way, with positive engagement and mutual respect.
x. Innovation is welcomed. But the precautionary principle is applied to new products, or to innovation in other areas when there is good reason to believe they might cause harm disproportionate to any benefits they might bring. Such judgments are made after discussion between relevant stakeholders and careful consideration of the potential consequences of any change in policy or regulation.
xi. Children and young persons are able to grow up in an environment where they are protected from betting-related harm.
We don’t claim that we have the capacity nor the expertise to mitigate this problem but we have the will and purpose to make responsible betting/gaming in Kenya reality.
We will endeavour to achieve with all effort by:
- Lobbying for the establishment of a Responsible Gaming Foundation with participation from all industry stakeholders. It will be financed by an agreed voluntary subscription from industry players. The stakeholders will be composed of sector leaders, regulatory officials and members of the health sector. Its primary purpose will be continuously probing the industry’s efforts at responsible gaming as well as giving overall guidance on responsible gaming policy and guidelines for the industry as well as best practice standards. This will form the backbone of self-regulation that will see the sector move towards responsibility and accountability.
- Rallying industry players to participate in an annual responsible gaming conference where specialists and resource persons in the area of relevance can share teach and impart their experiences and knowledge to all in attendance for the mass awareness of the pertinent issues at hand and how to best mitigate problems that may arise.
- Engaging health sector partners from Europe who have long and immense experience in identifying and mitigating betting-related problems. By offering these possibilities for collaboration with Kenya practitioners there will be a buildup of human capital capacity to assist Kenya and thus for the benefit of the gaming industry as a whole.
- Having an internal 24-7-365 internal on-call counsellor at our disposal that will both assess at-risk clients as well as offer the first line of help to those with a betting problem.
- Continuously training our staff on how to assess clients with potential betting-related problems as well as report to management for further action. This is in addition to implementing analytics on customer records/profiles in the casino for early warnings from tell-tale signs of problems.