The odds had been stacked against them for near­ly three months, but yes­ter­day, gam­blers breathed a sigh of re­lief when the ma­jor­i­ty of Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board op­er­a­tors re­sumed busi­ness.

De­spite many miss­ing the mark, play­ers said they were hap­py for a chance to hit the jack­pot once more.

Ac­cord­ing to one play­er who was cap­tured out­side a lot­tery booth on Kei­th Street, San Fer­nan­do, “I don’t win but I like the ex­cite­ment, the amuse­ment nah.”

Just be­fore mid­day yes­ter­day, a team from Guardian Me­dia cap­tured Abe­die Cox hus­tling to “play a mark” at a booth in Care­nage.

“I’d like 2 dol­lars on 6, bel­ly, 2 dol­lars on 14, mon­ey, and 2 dol­lars on 18, wa­ter boat...thank you, you know how long I wait­ing to come out the house and play some Play Whe.”

Cox said he had wait­ed months to try and cash in on the NL­CB games again.

“My bel­ly hun­gry, I want mon­ey and wa­ter go­ing and fall, we in Care­nage.”

Cox may have had all the com­pelling signs, but not the luck when the mid­day draw rolled around and 20, Dog, had played.

Yes­ter­day marked the re­turn of hope and anx­i­ety for lot­tery play­ers, as NL­CB booths and cen­tres re­opened af­ter op­er­a­tions were sus­pend­ed as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s mea­sure to stem the spread of COVID-19. For some, play­ing a mark meant more to them now than ever be­fore.

“The poor man could still get some­thing be­cause how the coun­try lock­down un­der the COVID virus, it is re­al pres­sure, things hard too bad out here,” one man said,

But while play­ers rolled in the ex­cite­ment, some lot­tery agents lan­guished in COVID’s back­lash.

A closed Lottery booth on the Tunapuna Main Road yesterday.

KERWIN PIERRE

Ac­cord­ing to Lot­to Agents Com­mit­tee chair­man Dean Per­sad, about 30 per cent of agents were un­able to re­sume op­er­a­tions, la­belling yes­ter­day’s re­open­ing as bit­ter­sweet.

Yes­ter­day, the T&T Guardian re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that close to half of the 2,400 lot­tery op­er­a­tors would not have been able to open af­ter some 150 of them used mon­ey ob­tained col­lect­ed from bets and games and failed to pay the NL­CB.

The sum to­talled $6 mil­lion.

In­stead, they used the mon­ey to pay rent, bills and sur­vive dur­ing the months they were not al­lowed to work, ac­cord­ing to Per­sad.

Per­sad again called for a life­line and in­ter­ven­tion from the au­thor­i­ties.

“We ask­ing the NL­CB to re­ac­tive agents ma­chines so they can make a liv­ing. As­sum­ing agents get $4,000, as Mr Nan­cis said, the (agents) will now be able to give $1,000 a week to NL­CB, he will have $3,000 for him­self and NL­CB will have $30-40,000 for it­self and pay­ment to­wards their loan.”

The NL­CB is threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion against lot­tery agents.

NL­CB chair­man Eu­stace Nan­cis has said the board is not a “slush fund” and de­mand­ed the agents re­pay the mon­ey.