The Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau of Macau has asked the city’s six casino operators to hire more security staff after it is revealed that manpower shortfall is partly to blame for a mob scuffle which took place on the casino floor of an integrated resort on the Cotai Strip on the first day of the May Day golden week holiday.
In a reply to legislator José Pereira Coutinho’s inquiry about security issues in local casinos, the Director of Macau’s gaming regulator, Adriano Marques Ho, said the authorities had summoned the heads of the security departments of the six concessionaires to discuss the May Day incident immediately after the scuffle broke out.
During the meeting, it was revealed that there were inadequate security guards on the casino floor when a group of mainland gamblers started a fistfight at Galaxy Resort on 1 May. The casino’s security guards on duty that day happened to be patrolling in another location when the brawl broke out and it took some time for them to arrive at the scene and stop the scuffle.
The gaming regulator has since requested all six operators to review their security arrangements and ensure that there is sufficient manpower to cope with emergencies of all sorts.
The May Day scuffle was the first serious security incident that happened in local casinos in nearly two decades. The 13 mainlanders involved in the brawl are banned from entering Macau and local casinos for two years.
