Taiwanese anti-gambling demonstrators protested outside the country’s Ministry of Education building in response to the department’s policy of subsidizing university courses that teach students on how to staff and run casinos. The group claims that the government is wasting the taxpayer’s money and leading people into dangerous gambling addictions. The protestors are also responding to an upcoming referendum to establish casino gaming on one of the offshore islands.

An official with the country’s Department of Higher Education denied the idea that the university courses encouraged gambling. Rather, the courses are intended to teach students how to manage casinos as well as other tourism operations. According to a department spokesperson, the courses have nothing to do with teaching players how to gamble nor encouraging students to make wagers on their own.

Early this year, the Taiwanese government passed a law that allowed outlying islands to vote on whether or not they wanted to have casino gambling available in their areas. Later this week, citizens in the county of Penghu are scheduled to vote in a referendum on establishing the first casino in the country’s history on the tiny island.

Anti-gambling protestors are also organizing to defeat the Penghu referendum as well as trying to close the university casino management classes. The leader of one of the country’s teachers’ unions stated that she has seen the lives of her students and their parents destroyed by gambling debts, and thus opposes any growth of gambling in the island nation. A number of other activists want to stop casinos from taking root.

One graduate student from the Penghu area is organizing a group of residents to vote down the referendum. He said that the influx of tourists and the level of changes to the island’s infrastructure to house them would be overwhelming to the small area and destroy much of its natural beauty. Also, since the casino license lasts for five years, other islands will start building casinos and Penghu will lose its monopoly on the industry.