Joshua Seemu­n­gal

The ex­ec­u­tive of the Elec­tron­ic Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go protest­ed out­side the NL­CB’s of­fice on Duke Street, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, de­mand­ing that im­me­di­ate ac­tion be tak­en against il­le­gal Play Whe op­er­a­tors.

The protest came close to three weeks af­ter a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­tiga­tive re­port on the il­le­gal in­dus­try.

Ac­cord­ing to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Alan Camp­bell, a cou­ple of days af­ter the in­ves­tiga­tive sto­ry was pub­lished, po­lice closed down sev­er­al out­lets.

How­ev­er, he said the ac­tion didn’t last long.

As a re­sult of the re­sump­tion of il­le­gal Play Whe op­er­a­tions, cou­pled with chal­lenges con­nect­ed to the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic, many NL­CB booth own­ers are fail­ing to meet the sales thresh­old.

While Thurs­day’s protest on­ly saw ten ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers tak­ing part, Camp­bell warned that if suf­fi­cient ac­tion isn’t tak­en by po­lice soon, protest ac­tion will be ramped up.

This would in­volve, he said, agents across the coun­try join­ing them in a mas­sive protest.

“This is just the smoke. If they don’t re­solve mat­ters, we will have to step up the ac­tion. We want ac­tion now,” the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent de­mand­ed.

Camp­bell added that while he un­der­stands the process to pros­e­cute those be­hind il­le­gal Play Whe will take time, the le­gal agents can­not af­ford to wait years for “Big Fish” to be charged.

He said far more im­me­di­ate ac­tion is al­so re­quired.

Po­lice have been re­luc­tant to give sub­stan­tial in­for­ma­tion about their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­dus­try.

Less than three weeks ago, Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions about the in­dus­try and the al­leged in­volve­ment of some of­fi­cers.

In an email re­sponse, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Jayson Forde said, “The TTPS is con­duct­ing en­quiries in­to all as­pects of il­le­gal gam­bling in T&T. We have no com­plaints about po­lice of­fi­cers tak­ing pay­offs from any lot­to ven­dor.”

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed by a well-placed po­lice source that the TTPS is close to a break­through in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to il­le­gal Play Whe.

Ac­cord­ing to a source at the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board, the il­le­gal game is worth more than $1.3 bil­lion per year.

The as­so­ci­a­tion al­so called for lot­to booth agents to be al­lowed ac­cess to COVID-19 salary grants, say­ing their in­come has been re­duced dras­ti­cal­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.