The On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (OGAATT) has writ­ten the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) over the de­ci­sion to slap sev­er­al of its mem­bers with delin­quent fee charges.

A let­ter writ­ten by pres­i­dent of OGAATT Dean Per­sad, ques­tioned if the NL­CB had made any checks be­fore im­pos­ing pun­ish­ment.

Per­sad said, “Be­fore im­ple­ment­ing this fee on ‘delin­quent ac­counts’ this as­so­ci­a­tion is im­plor­ing you to en­sure, first, that it is not NL­CB’s Fi­nance De­part­ment and/or the re­spec­tive banks that are ‘delin­quent.’”

Per­sad made ref­er­ence to a com­mu­ni­ca­tion dat­ed De­cem­ber 9, 2021, from the NL­CB on the mat­ter, stat­ing that the NL­CB’s “wan­ton dis­re­spect and dis­re­gard for this as­so­ci­a­tion and agents knows no bounds.”

He said, “Con­sul­ta­tion and hear­ing our con­cerns would have been wel­comed, and the de­cent thing to do, rather than a uni­lat­er­al ap­proach and provo­ca­tion. Your ap­proach achieves noth­ing more than find­ing the ire of agents and con­tin­ues to frus­trate, de­mo­ti­vate and de­mor­alise us.”

Per­sad said many agents, in­clud­ing him, had been un­just­ly la­belled as delin­quent de­spite per­form­ing their func­tions prop­er­ly.

He cit­ed two in­stances in 2019, in­volv­ing him, as ex­am­ples.

He added: “First­ly, in De­cem­ber 2019 I paid the win tax li­a­bil­i­ty and as re­cent as Ju­ly 2021 NL­CB was still writ­ing me on pay­ing off this debt or they (NL­CB) would “in­ten­si­fy our ef­forts to re­cov­er these monies.” The fi­nance de­part­ment was “delin­quent.””

He then stat­ed, “Sec­ond­ly, in April 2019 my ma­chine was sup­pressed for two days be­cause the bank (FCB) did not de­posit to NL­CB on time. It was an “in bank” de­posit, so I had my de­posit slip as proof. The bank was “delin­quent.”

Be­cause of the time­ly and pru­dent in­ter­ven­tion of Mr Nan­cis, the chair­man, a le­gal bat­tle was avoid­ed and the mat­ter was set­tled am­i­ca­bly.

He said agents have reg­u­lar­ly had is­sues with the banks, par­tic­u­lar­ly as night safe de­posits pro­vide agents with proof of de­posit “when in­formed of “short or late de­posits,” es­pe­cial­ly with FCB.”

Per­sad said those con­cerns had been raised to the board of the NL­CB pre­vi­ous­ly.

How­ev­er, he said, “To date, you have not act­ed or shown any will­ing­ness to ad­dress or im­prove on these short­com­ings. These “delin­quent” be­hav­iours is for NL­CB to re­solve, not agents. We can­not ex­pect agents alone to im­prove when NL­CB con­tin­ues to be in­dif­fer­ent.”

Per­sad said the NL­CB need­ed to stop us­ing “strong arm tac­tics” as he found it con­trary to the good­will be­tween the agents and the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

He closed the let­ter stat­ing, “We no­ticed that the $100.00 week­ly fee is not shown in your set­tle­ment slip. We sin­cere­ly hope that this fee is re­moved. It would go a long way in im­prov­ing re­la­tion­ships with agents. This As­so­ci­a­tion is com­mit­ted to a har­mo­nious and am­i­ca­ble re­la­tion­ship with NL­CB. We are open for dis­cus­sion and meet­ing. We have said this con­sis­tent­ly.”