RHON­DOR DOWLAT 

Se­nior Re­porter 

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt 

The Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) wants to en­sure its agents meet their fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions. 

As the Lot­to Booth own­ers con­tin­ue to protest the new poli­cies im­ple­ment­ed by the NL­CB, Chair­man Eu­stace Nan­cis ex­plained these mea­sures are nec­es­sary to main­tain the board’s in­tegri­ty and pro­tect gov­ern­ment rev­enue.

The dis­pute cen­tres on the con­trac­tu­al re­quire­ment for agents to re­mit funds col­lect­ed from lot­tery sales with­in one week. Ac­cord­ing to the NL­CB, most of its 1,200 li­censed agents com­ply with these terms.

How­ev­er, Nan­cis said some agents re­peat­ed­ly miss their re­mit­tance dead­lines, lead­ing to ma­chine sus­pen­sions and pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters.

“These funds are col­lect­ed on be­half of the NL­CB and are the prop­er­ty of the NL­CB,” Nan­cis said. “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.”

The NL­CB has is­sued let­ters to agents with over­due pay­ments, aim­ing to re­cov­er more than $6 mil­lion in out­stand­ing funds. As part of these ef­forts, agents must al­so meet the statu­to­ry re­quire­ment to post a bond un­der Sec­tion 25 of the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Act, en­sur­ing com­pli­ance with their con­trac­tu­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Ad­dress­ing re­cent me­dia re­ports, Nan­cis re­fut­ed claims over 100 lot­tery ma­chines were re­turned by frus­trat­ed agents. In­stead, he clar­i­fied 36 ma­chines were de­in­stalled due to un­paid debts ex­ceed­ing $4 mil­lion, while 22 ma­chines were re­turned due to lo­ca­tion clo­sures or low prof­itabil­i­ty.

The NL­CB stressed these mea­sures are not in­tend­ed to pe­nalise agents un­fair­ly but are es­sen­tial for the board’s ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tion.