Less than a year after the National Organizer of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) Samuel Awuku, was appointed to replace Mr Kofi Osei Ameyaw as the Director General of the National Lottery Authority (NLA), agitations have started emerging with operators raising concerns.
According to the operators, management led by Mr Awuku has started committing illegalities by seeking to licence Operators of Private Lotto (OPL) also known as ‘Banker-to-Banker’.
DAYBREAK is learning that under Act 722, NLA is only mandated to license Lotto Marketing Companies and not Banker-to-Banker Lotto Operators/Agents/writers.
NLA under the National Lotto Act 2006 (Act 722) is supposed to issue coupons to Lotto Marketing Companies (LMC) to sell in exchange for Lotto Commission which is currently at 20%.
The operators are therefore at a loss why and how the regulator made it, its responsibility to compete with the private sector Lotto Operators nationwide.
The operators are demanding that the Ministry of Finance and the National Lottery Authority simply create the enabling environment for the lottery industry to sustain the various jobs which have been created by the Operators of Private Lotto.
They described the recent arrest of its members by the Authority as a threat to national security that tends to worsen the alarming unemployment situation in the country.
They questioned why NLA with its powers has woefully failed to reform the Lotto business to make it attractive to the staking public but are busily working to compete with operators in the space.
According to them, it is the poor Commission of 20% to the lotto marketing companies that has compelled the majority of the Lotto Companies to sell for the Banker-to-Banker Lotto Operators to attract a Commission between 30%-40%.
They labelled the Authority as incompetent for scheming to monopolize the operations of lottery in the country.
