The Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (known by its Portuguese initials DICJ) is planning to recruit 65 new staff members in 2025, with most of the new roles being inspectors stationed at the city’s casinos, according to a Legislative Assembly report on Macao’s financial-year 2025 budget.
While the report did not divulge the current size of the DICJ’s workforce, casino news outlet GGR Asia said that the bureau was increasing its manpower in order to more effectively implement casino inspection duties outlined under the current 10-year concessions of the city’s six gaming operators. That concession period began on 1 January 2023.
The proposed recruitment drive is also linked to a 2021 law requiring the DICJ to more than double its number of employees over an unspecified period of time.
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Macao’s gaming industry, which is also its economic mainstay, has been undergoing an overhaul in recent years, with a crackdown on junkets and tough new laws on illegal gambling and gambling credit.
Last June, the central government ordered a crackdown on unauthorised currency exchanges happening within the city’s casino-resorts as part of a broader plan to wipe out underground gambling, money laundering, loan sharking and scams, which officials said had “seriously affected social stability” in the SAR. Nearly 850 suspects have been detained in the operation to date.
Macao’s new government has brought about a change in leadership at the DICJ, with its former director Adriano Marques Ho becoming director-general of Macau Customs Service. The DICJ’s former deputy director, Lio Chi Chong, is now its acting director.
