Ke­jan Haynes

The Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board and the Ju­di­cia­ry have fi­nal­ly signed off and for­malised for the pay­ment of court fines, like main­te­nance, mask fines and traf­fic tick­ets, at NL­CB booths.

How­ev­er, On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (OGAATT) pres­i­dent Dean Per­sad be­lieves the new sys­tem isn’t worth the has­sle for Lot­to booth agents.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Ju­di­cia­ry, Court­pay vouch­ers will now be avail­able at NL­CB booths to fa­cil­i­tate main­te­nance pay­ments and fines. It comes fol­low­ing months-long meet­ings and tests be­tween the two agen­cies to en­sure the sys­tem worked op­ti­mal­ly.

The pub­lic can pur­chase the vouch­er, then go on­line to court­pay.tt­law­courts.org to com­plete the trans­ac­tion. The Ju­di­cia­ry says any­one with­out in­ter­net ac­cess can com­plete the trans­ac­tion at the Ju­di­cia­ry’s pub­lic kiosks.

Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly months ago that with the new court pay sys­tem, prompt­ed by changes dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, meant the pub­lic could on­ly pay fines with cred­it cards, leav­ing those with­out cred­it cards or bank ac­counts with­out op­tions to pay.

The Ju­di­cia­ry stopped in-per­son pay­ments of fines at Mag­is­trates’ Courts to avoid close in­ter­ac­tions. It re­sult­ed in a back­log of over $27 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pub­lic health (mask) fines alone.

Last Fri­day, the Ju­di­cia­ry re­vealed there was a back­log and late pay­ment to those ex­pect­ed to re­ceive main­te­nance. The Ju­di­cia­ry said the new pay­ment via Lot­to out­lets is the first step in ad­dress­ing these de­lays in pay­ments.

In a re­sponse, how­ev­er, the OGAATT pres­i­dent ar­gued that the new sys­tem will cre­ate more has­sle for Lot­to agents.

Guardian Me­dia was shown a let­ter sent from the NL­CB to agents not­ing Court­pay cash vouch­ers could be be­tween $20 and $8,000. Agents will re­ceive a com­mis­sion of $1 for every Court­Pay trans­ac­tion for every pub­lic health or traf­fic vi­o­la­tion vouch­er sold and 50 cents for every main­te­nance vouch­er.

Per­sad said for Lot­to booth op­er­a­tors, it’s not worth the ex­tra risk.

“The dan­ger in­volved now in hav­ing ex­cess cash in your booth at any giv­en time now with this new court pay, it is dan­ger­ous in these times with the risk in­volved and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. For us, it is not worth the risk,” Per­sad said.

“Even if you’re tak­ing a risk you want to have one that is ben­e­fi­cial for you. One dol­lar in some cas­es and 50 cents in oth­er cas­es doesn’t cut it. It is dis­re­spect­ful and cal­lous. More work­load, more cash, more risk and noth­ing to show for it.”

He al­so want­ed as­sur­ance from the Ju­di­cia­ry and the NL­CB that the pub­lic has a clear method to com­plain and query any is­sues they may have, not­ing Lot­to booth op­er­a­tors may be on the wrong side of cus­tomer anger al­though they’re sim­ply a third par­ty in the trans­ac­tion.

Per­sad wants the NL­CB to al­so fix some of their oth­er is­sues first be­fore adding this new el­e­ment.

“Present­ly we have a lot of is­sues with banks re­mit­ting funds to NL­CB. We hard­ly have over the counter de­posits any­more. We’re hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with NL­CB re­ceiv­ing their funds on time and then they pe­nalise agents for that by sup­press­ing their ma­chines and charg­ing a $500 to re­in­state them,” he com­plained.

Per­sad said he want­ed more con­sul­ta­tion on this new Court­Pay is­sue be­fore it was im­ple­ment­ed.

“Now we’re go­ing to have more cash and we have not solved the ini­tial is­sue of get­ting the mon­ey to NL­CB on time. In our view, adding more funds and more cash to a sys­tem that is still not fixed is a prob­lem for us,” Per­sad said.