Agents of the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) are rais­ing con­cerns over what they de­scribe as poor­ly ex­e­cut­ed poli­cies and un­work­able op­er­a­tional mea­sures that have sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt­ed their busi­ness­es. 

Dean Per­sad, Pres­i­dent of the On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (OGAATT), called the mea­sures “coun­ter­pro­duc­tive” and high­light­ed their neg­a­tive im­pact on agents’ liveli­hoods.

“Ma­chines are be­ing sup­pressed be­cause the NL­CB claims they’re not re­ceiv­ing mon­ey on time. The is­sue isn’t with the agents—it’s with the banks. Yet, we’re the ones be­ing pun­ished,” Per­sad stat­ed.

Agents are al­so frus­trat­ed by the lack of trans­paren­cy re­gard­ing dai­ly sales lim­its.

“How can you put a lim­it on sales with­out no­ti­fy­ing agents? Ma­chines are shut down with­out warn­ing, re­sult­ing in loss of earn­ings for both agents and the NL­CB,” Per­sad added.

One agent shared their or­deal, ex­plain­ing how their ma­chine was dis­abled af­ter reach­ing $6,600 in sales, de­spite pro­vid­ing proof of an at­tempt­ed bank de­posit. “These poli­cies are cre­at­ing un­nec­es­sary stress and con­fu­sion,” the agent said, not­ing that their ma­chine re­mained of­fline un­til the next day, lead­ing to fur­ther fi­nan­cial loss­es.

The agents al­so crit­i­cised the NL­CB’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion prac­tices, claim­ing that calls and emails of­ten go unan­swered.

Per­sad has ap­pealed to the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to in­ter­vene. “These poli­cies and mea­sures are not achiev­ing their in­tend­ed pur­pose and must be re­viewed im­me­di­ate­ly,” he wrote.

“Agents are un­der im­mense pres­sure, and the si­lence from NL­CB is deaf­en­ing. This lev­el of un­re­spon­sive­ness is un­ac­cept­able,” Per­sad said.

When ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia, NL­CB Chair­man Eu­stace Nan­cis de­nied on Sat­ur­day that ma­chine sup­pres­sions were linked to new poli­cies im­ple­ment­ed on De­cem­ber 1, de­scrib­ing the is­sue as op­er­a­tional. “We are aware of the con­cerns and are work­ing on ad­dress­ing them,” Nan­cis said.

The NL­CB al­so is­sued a re­lease on Sat­ur­day evening de­fend­ing its re­cent mea­sures, stat­ing they were im­ple­ment­ed to ad­dress high delin­quen­cy rates among agents.