The Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) is stand­ing firm on its lat­est poli­cies for Play Whe and Lot­to agents.

Yes­ter­day, NL­CB chair­man Eu­stace Nan­cis said the “cur­rent pol­i­cy re­mains un­changed.”

Un­der the new rules, which take ef­fect from De­cem­ber 1, agents must make night­ly cash de­posits in­stead of us­ing bank safes, a re­quire­ment agents ar­gue is both un­safe and in­con­ve­nient.

The pol­i­cy al­so im­pos­es penal­ties for any dis­crep­an­cies be­tween re­port­ed sales and de­posits, which agents say will lead to se­vere fi­nan­cial strain.

Agents must al­so now pay a $25,000 bond to se­cure their ma­chines.

The pol­i­cy has sparked anger and un­ease from the agents, who are plan­ning a week-long shut­down in re­sponse to the changes.

Dean Per­sad, pres­i­dent of the On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (OGAATT), said his or­gan­i­sa­tion had reached out to NL­CB ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing via a let­ter, re­quest­ing an ur­gent meet­ing. 

Per­sad said they were “await­ing a re­sponse from the NL­CB, giv­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage.”

If the NL­CB de­clined to talk, Per­sad warned, the as­so­ci­a­tion would pro­ceed with the planned shut­down and protests out­side the NL­CB’s of­fice.

Per­sad said agents were deeply frus­trat­ed over the im­pact of these new mea­sures. He claimed agents had been forced to re­pay un­ac­count­ed amounts of mon­ey due to what they be­lieve are sys­tem er­rors with­in NL­CB.

He added over 200 agents had al­ready giv­en up their booths be­cause of poli­cies made by the NL­CB, which they deemed un­fair. Per­sad said agents be­lieve the new poli­cies are un­ten­able and have called on the NL­CB to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to ad­dress their griev­ances.

Per­sad said they have al­ready sent the in­for­ma­tion to their lawyers, in­clud­ing re­cent pol­i­cy up­dates, and have not ruled out le­gal ac­tion.

It is not the first time there has been an is­sue be­tween the as­so­ci­a­tion and the NL­CB. In Sep­tem­ber 2023, Per­sad and agents threat­ened to sue the NL­CB af­ter there were de­mands for agents to use a night safe to de­posit cash.

Per­sad had said then that the night safe de­posit sys­tem was less than ide­al. He claimed that mon­ey de­posit­ed could not be ac­count­ed for from time to time.