RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

The Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) is de­fend­ing its poli­cies amid mount­ing crit­i­cism from agents over new fi­nan­cial mea­sures, which some say are dri­ving them out of busi­ness.

While Pres­i­dent of the On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Dean Per­sad, re­cent­ly called the poli­cies “laugh­able” and dam­ag­ing, NL­CB Chair­man Eu­stace Nan­cis main­tained that the mea­sures were crit­i­cal to up­hold­ing the in­tegri­ty of the board and safe­guard­ing gov­ern­ment rev­enue.

In a state­ment sent to Guardian Me­dia, Nan­cis said most of the board’s 1,200 li­censed agents com­plied with the rules, but a small group of agents re­peat­ed­ly failed to re­mit funds on time, lead­ing to ma­chine de­ac­ti­va­tions and pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters.

“These funds are col­lect­ed on be­half of the NL­CB and are the prop­er­ty of the NL­CB. Fail­ure by any agent to re­mit funds on time and in full, with the in­tent to per­ma­nent­ly de­prive the NL­CB of these funds, is tan­ta­mount to un­just en­rich­ment,” he said.

Nan­cis added that the NL­CB had is­sued let­ters to agents with over­due bal­ances in an ef­fort to re­cov­er over $6 mil­lion in out­stand­ing debts.

Per­sad, how­ev­er, ar­gued that the NL­CB’s pol­i­cy was short-sight­ed and fi­nan­cial­ly reck­less, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the rev­enue lost by dis­abling ma­chines.

“If you av­er­age it out,” he stat­ed, “each agent would owe about $111,000. Now, un­der the old con­tract, agents were re­quired to have week­ly sales of at least $25,000. Mul­ti­ply 36 agents by that amount, and you’re look­ing at $900,000 per week. In one month, that’s $3.6 mil­lion, and in two months, that’s $7.2 mil­lion. So the NL­CB could have re­cov­ered all their mon­ey if these agents stayed op­er­a­tional, but in­stead, they chose to de­ac­ti­vate their ma­chines.”

e sug­gest­ed that the NL­CB’s ac­tions could harm the broad­er gam­ing in­dus­try and lead to fur­ther fi­nan­cial in­sta­bil­i­ty and the as­so­ci­a­tion might con­sid­er protests or even a shut­down if their con­cerns con­tin­ued to go un­ad­dressed.

Re­spond­ing to me­dia re­ports about agents re­turn­ing over 100 ma­chines in frus­tra­tion, Nan­cis said that on­ly 36 ma­chines were de­ac­ti­vat­ed for un­paid debts ex­ceed­ing $4 mil­lion, while an ad­di­tion­al 22 were re­turned due to lo­ca­tion clo­sures or low prof­itabil­i­ty.