Lack of smoking rules worries casino staff

Less than a year before the gaming industry must take up the indoor smoking ban, casino workers are worried that the government has yet to release regulations for the future smoking areas.
A ban on smoking indoors in public spaces came into effect this month but casinos will have one more year to set up dedicated smoking areas of up to 50 percent of their total public area.
Last October the Health Bureau (SSM) director Lei Chin Ion said a Chief Executive dispatch setting technical requirements and standards for casino smoking areas would be ready by the end of 2011.
But the Macau Gaming Enterprises Staff’s Association called on the SSM to speed up the release of the guidelines. Quoted by TDM News, the director general of the association said dealers are worried second-hand smoke will remain a problem even after 2013.
“The ventilation facilities should be separated, because if they are the same then second-hand smoke will still travel through the entire casino, it will move around and you can still smell it,” Tam Pou Iong explained.
The representative also stressed that the healthcare coverage of casino workers doesn’t include the side effects of second-hand smoke. She asked the government to solve this problem.
“Even in the smoking areas, they [casinos] still have to follow our standards,” Lei Chin Ion said last October. “The harmful substances in the air and the places for smoking cannot exceed certain standards. We will punish them if they exceed the standards.”