RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

Con­cerns have in­ten­si­fied over an im­passe be­tween the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) and Play Whe/Lot­to booth own­ers as the NL­CB has sus­pend­ed mul­ti­ple ma­chines across the coun­try, a move that raised ques­tions about the board’s mo­tives and man­age­ment prac­tices.

The sus­pen­sions stem from al­leged pro­ce­dur­al is­sues, in­clud­ing dis­crep­an­cies in night de­posits.

Some booth op­er­a­tors claimed that tech­ni­cal mal­func­tions were caus­ing op­er­a­tional dis­rup­tions and con­tribut­ing to mis­placed funds. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they re­port­ed that night de­posits of­ten failed to gen­er­ate re­ceipts, leav­ing op­er­a­tors with­out doc­u­ment­ed proof of trans­ac­tions.

To ad­dress these is­sues, said NL­CB chair­man Eu­stace Nan­cis, new poli­cies would go in­to ef­fect on De­cem­ber 1, de­signed to ad­dress mal­func­tion­ing ma­chines and miss­ing re­ceipts.

How­ev­er, the pres­i­dent of the On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion, Dean Per­sad, voiced con­cerns that the NL­CB’s ap­proach of sus­pend­ing ma­chines was “mis­guid­ed.”

He al­so said that based on re­ports from op­er­a­tors across the coun­try, he sus­pect­ed the num­ber of sus­pend­ed ma­chines ex­ceed­ed the of­fi­cial count of 36 giv­en by the NL­CB.

The im­passe has al­so led to spec­u­la­tion over the po­ten­tial pri­vati­sa­tion of the state-owned NL­CB. The ru­mours, which sur­faced in­ter­nal­ly among NL­CB staff on Wednes­day, sug­gest that the cur­rent board may be po­si­tion­ing the agency to ap­pear fi­nan­cial­ly un­sta­ble and po­ten­tial­ly bank­rupt, pos­si­bly paving the way for a pri­vate ac­qui­si­tion.

When asked about the ru­mours, Nan­cis firm­ly dis­missed them.

“NL­CB is a very strong en­ti­ty,” he stat­ed, urg­ing the me­dia to avoid fu­elling base­less spec­u­la­tion.

Per­sad, al­so said he had not re­ceived any in­for­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that the NL­CB might be mov­ing to­ward pri­vati­sa­tion. How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that the un­re­solved is­sues have con­tributed to in­creased spec­u­la­tion among booth op­er­a­tors.

Some op­er­a­tors have hint­ed at po­ten­tial le­gal ac­tion if their griev­ances re­main un­ad­dressed.

Nan­cis, how­ev­er, ex­pressed con­fi­dence that the NL­CB was pre­pared to re­spond to any le­gal chal­lenges that might arise.