June 7, 2016 By Hassan Gbassay Koroma
Games World International (GWI), one of the world’s leading gaming and amusement companies with over twenty three years of experience in the industry last Friday 3rd 2016 opened a modern casino in Freetown.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the casino at Lagoonda Hotel at Aberdeen in Freetown, the Managing Director Tani Hanna said the casino was one of its kind in west Africa and certainly the best of its kind in Sierra Leone, as it was transformed in the way gaming casino should look, operate and give patrons the highest level of service.
He said their aim and philosophy was to bring the latest Gaming equipment, products and technology, coupled with the highest standards of operations to their clients and to ensure a successful and profitable business model.
He said in collaboration with local operators, GWI has opened gaming establishments/social clubs in Liberia, Djibouti, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Sierra Leone ,adding that their Casinos runs to the highest International gaming standards and are furnished with the latest gaming equipment available on the market.
“Traditionally, doing gaming in this part of the world has been limited to the ambitious non-professionals who are unable to do such a business in the developed world, take advantage of minimum rules and regulations, address the game industry with hardly any serious competition to reap the rewards of their incompetence in this region,” Mr. Hanna said.
He added that with exception of few places further north and in the southernmost tip of the Africa continent, it was evident that casino operators have invested very little in their revenues, technology and human resource.
He said Games World International have for the last 15 years decided to take a different approach by bringing in the radical changes to their African operations, and that the casino was a venue built on the latest technologies the market has to offer the industry in terms of games and operational procedures.
He said they were very pleased to be the first in the region to operate under the international standards of conduct for gaming operators.
He continued that based on their belief in the wise leadership of the country and seeing the business growth in the last few years prior to the Ebola epidemic, they persuaded to go ahead and invest in Sierra Leone, despite the hold up during the Ebola era, but they did not gave up.
He disclosed that the casino had already employed 70 Sierra Leones who have gone under training on how to work in a casino professionally.
Also making statement, Minister of Tourism and Cultural Affairs Sidie Yayah Tunis said the government focus was to boost the economy and having such casino opened in the country, was a boost to the country.
He said his ministry was responsible to providing the platform for investors that were coming to invest their monies in the country, and that opening such modern casino was one of achieving his ministry’s plans to transform the country and make it suitable for investors.