An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Elec­tron­ic Lot­to agents and the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) are at odds over plans to in­tro­duce Sun­day gam­ing, with both sides out­lin­ing sharply dif­fer­ent po­si­tions on se­cu­ri­ty, con­sul­ta­tion and rev­enue as the Feb­ru­ary 8 roll­out ap­proach­es.

Pres­i­dent of the Elec­tron­ic Lot­to Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ELATT), Allen Camp­belle, ar­gued that the move places agents at un­nec­es­sary risk and was an­nounced with­out ad­e­quate con­sul­ta­tion. He main­tained that agents ben­e­fit from in­her­ent se­cu­ri­ty be­tween Mon­day and Sat­ur­day due to steady pedes­tri­an and ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic, but that Sun­days are marked­ly dif­fer­ent.

Camp­belle warned that on Sun­days, agents could be left alone in booths for up to ten or 12 hours with lit­tle sur­round­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, in­creas­ing their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to crime. He al­so raised con­cerns about the so­cial im­pact on op­er­a­tors, say­ing agents are “peo­ple too”, who val­ue time with fam­i­ly and friends.

He re­ject­ed claims that the de­ci­sion was dri­ven by pub­lic de­mand, not­ing that since the in­tro­duc­tion of Play­Way in 1994, he had nev­er en­coun­tered mem­bers of the pub­lic call­ing for Sun­day op­er­a­tions to be re­in­stat­ed.

Camp­belle ques­tioned whether the ini­tia­tive was fi­nan­cial­ly mo­ti­vat­ed and point­ed in­stead to il­le­gal gam­bling as the re­al is­sue af­fect­ing rev­enues. He said il­le­gal Play­Way has re­duced agents’ earn­ings by an es­ti­mat­ed 40 to 45 per cent, ref­er­enc­ing com­ments pre­vi­ous­ly made by the fi­nance min­is­ter, plac­ing the val­ue of il­le­gal gam­bling at $9 bil­lion based on 2018 fig­ures.

Ad­dress­ing il­le­gal gam­bling, he ar­gued, would gen­er­ate far more rev­enue than ex­tend­ing op­er­at­ing days.

On the is­sue of con­sul­ta­tion, Camp­belle stat­ed that ELATT wrote to the new NL­CB board in Ju­ly and Oc­to­ber last year, seek­ing a meet­ing. While a meet­ing was even­tu­al­ly pro­posed, he ob­ject­ed to con­di­tions re­quir­ing a signed list of mem­bers and a draft agen­da, de­scrib­ing those re­quire­ments as un­prece­dent­ed in ELATT’s deal­ings with pre­vi­ous boards.
NL­CB chair­man Ken Em­rith de­fend­ed the board’s po­si­tion, ex­plain­ing that since the new board took of­fice, sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als and groups have claimed to rep­re­sent agents. With more than 1,300 agents na­tion­wide, Em­rith said the board needs clar­i­ty be­fore en­gag­ing.

“All I ask is a list of the peo­ple you claim to rep­re­sent and their sig­na­tures, so I know who we’re talk­ing to,” Em­rith said, adding that the re­quest was rea­son­able.

Em­rith al­so said Sun­day gam­ing al­ready ex­ists in T&T through casi­nos and the sale of scratch tick­ets and is stan­dard prac­tice in many coun­tries across the Caribbean, the Unit­ed States and Eu­rope.

He stressed that the Feb­ru­ary 8 in­tro­duc­tion is a soft launch, and par­tic­i­pa­tion is op­tion­al for agents, while main­tain­ing the NL­CB’s long-stand­ing pol­i­cy of not of­fer­ing games on pub­lic or re­li­gious hol­i­days.

The de­bate has al­so drawn com­ment from the T&T Coun­cil of Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es, who warned that gam­bling is ad­dic­tive and that in­creas­ing its ac­cep­tance in so­ci­ety can have a harm­ful, na­tion­al im­pact.