Image by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos

Peruvian Casino Workers Protest Against the Strict Shutdown Measures Amidst a Constitutional Crisis

Article by : Helen Dec 14, 2020

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Casino workers in Peru have had enough. More than 50 thousand people took to the streets all over the country to protest the strict shutdown that left many unemployed and struggling to feed themselves and their families for the past nine months. In Lima, protesters marched all the way to the Congress to make their demands for reopening heard.

The industry employs roughly 86 thousand people directly, with another 26 thousand relying on income from the casinos indirectly. The casino industry on lockdown harms not only workers themselves: Peru’s budget reportedly already lost $42 million in unpaid taxes in the first seven months of the pandemic. Following these protests, the President of Peruvian Congress met with the representatives of the casino industry to talk through the options regarding reopening the casinos. Vásquez reassured the casino workers that the government will do everything in its power to allow casinos to resume their operations.

There isn’t much that needs to be done: the government has already eased down many of the restrictions towards non-essential businesses, allowing restaurants, for example, to operate at a 60-percent capacity. Furthermore, the protocols for reopening casinos have already been developed by the Ministries of Health and Foreign Trade and Tourism; yet, they were never signed into effect by the then-president Manuel Merino.

We’re already in compliance with protocols. All betting rooms have been adapted to comply with the guidelines established by the Ministry of Health and by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism. We already have an approved pre-protocol the [authorities] haven’t published it yet.

The casino workers’ frustration – and protesting efforts – are also a part of the bigger picture. The overall political situation in Peru is far from stable. The country is undergoing a constitutional crisis, fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and the nine-month-long shutdown of all non-essential businesses that left thousands of workers struggling to survive. (In fact, 2 million Peruvians filed for unemployment since the pandemic started, according to this report by Deutsche Welle.)

The coronavirus-related restrictions hit the economy hard: the second quarter of 2020. The International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook has drastic projections for the Peruvian economy – its real GDP (gross domestic product) is expected to shrink by 13.9 percent. The unemployment rate that was at 6.6% last year is projected to almost double in 2020 to 12.5%.

It seems to have done little to curb the spread of coronavirus – as of December 2, the country has a total of 963,605 confirmed COVID-19 cases resulting in 35,966 deaths. It is a lot for a country with a population of 32 million: to put it into perspective, there are 29 thousand confirmed cases per 1 million people. (Countries like Norway and Finland have only 6.6 and 4.5 thousand COVID-19 cases per 1 million of the population, respectively.) Besides, the per-capita mortality rate remains extremely high as Peruvian hospitals lack oxygen and other equipment.

All of this led to massive protests and social unrest throughout the country and even having three presidents over the course of just one week. It remains to be seen whether the newly appointed legislature’s president Francisco Sagasti will be enough to put the protesters at ease and lead the country out of the turmoil.

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