Members of the Association of Lotto Marketing Companies (LMCs), the umbrella body of licensed private lotto operators, have threatened to join the array of illegal lotto operators if management of National Lotteries Authority (NLA) fails to enforce measures the regulator has introduced to streamline and curtail the nefarious activities of illegal operators.
According to them, they are in full support of NLA’s measures to particularly license, control, monitor and ensure that all activities by the illegal operators are in line with acceptable standards.
“NLA has put in measures to sanitise the lotto business, but if we see them dilly-dallying to ensure that the measures come to fruition, we will advise ourselves,” General Secretary of LMC, Kofi Frimpong cautioned. NLA streamlines illegal lotto operations
Management of NLA has made provision for all illegal lotto operators to register with the authority and obtain licence under terms and conditions, and be allocated with point of sales terminals, all aimed at ensuring that nobody becomes unemployed.
This, according to NLA, is to ensure transparency, accountability and credibility, which are in line with acceptable standards in the game.
NLA licence fees
The fees NLA collected are GH₵1 million each paid by 24 operators to operate nationwide; GH₵180 each for lotto writers nationwide, and GH₵5,000 each for lotto agents nationwide.
But the Ghana Lotto Operators Association (GLOA) and its allies, including Concerned Lotto Agents and Writers Association, are opposed to the NLA’s measures.
Speaking at a press conference by LMC yesterday to react to the threats by GLOA members, Kofi Frimpong reiterated that LMC members are solidly behind the board and management of the NLA, and assured them of their total support towards measures they are introducing to ensure that the NLA becomes a major source of revenue for the state.
“We also support it because it will ensure a ‘win-win’ situation where they will continue to earn their living and NLA, for that matter government, will also be getting her fair share of revenues.
He reiterated that the lottery business is an indirect way of taxing interested people to generate revenue for government to use to carry out its developmental agenda.
He indicated that it is pertinent, but sad, to state that banker-to-banker has over the years been operating and undermining the revenue generation efforts of the NLA.
This, he said, they carry out by pirating winning members, to the extent that they have succeeded in annexing a large segment of NLA’s market, to the detriment of the national economy.
NLA refuses some operators licence
NLA is said to have denied some operators licence, on grounds that they have not met all the conditions precedent.
In view of this development, the Ghana Lotto Operators Association (GLOA) and its allies, including Concerned Lotto Agents and Writers Association, want all monies collected by the NLA to be refunded, claiming that systems/machines were unlawfully taken under fraudulent pretences.
Spokesperson and lawyer for the associations, Ato Konduah said the intended use of the security agents to harass private lotto operators does not give any benefit to the government, but rather perpetrate the new Chinese platform rental fee fraud against the state under the watch of management at the NLA.
Mr Konduah added that government must be duly advised on the insecurity, anger, resistance and public refusal to vote out the NPP in 2020.
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