Razak Kojo Opoku, the head of the Public Relations Unit of the National Lottery Authority has accused some private lotto operations of seeking to collapse the state lottery regulating body.
In an interview with Okay FM, Razak Kojo Opoku said that the operators of Alpha Lotto are not respecting the conditions of the agreement they signed with the NLA.
He noted that the ‘illegal’ acts of Alpha Lotto and some private lotto organization operators posed a great threat to the NLA and that it was in the interest of the country that it cracked the whip on them.
“Alpha lotto were operating beyond the terms and condition upon which the NLA granted them a license. They don’t have the right to conduct independent live draw parallel to NLA. They do it the same as the NLA.
“The license was for them to use the Point of Sale terminals to market lotto. The type of lotto was the VAG lotto because of the agreement we have with the Veterans Association of Ghana. We gave them the license on that basis. They were to depend on the POS system to sell the lotto and depend on the draw by the NLA.
“Nowhere in their contract did it state clearly that the private lotto operators can undertake live draws. They should produce that part of their contract to Ghanaians. Alpha was doing it recalcitrant. If you are a good citizen, you won’t conduct yourself in ways that will collapse your regulator. NLA is about drawing of numbers so the moment you allow a private person to do something parallel to the NLA, the draw of NLA will become useless and if that happens, you’ll collapse NLA. So, should we sit down for NLA to collapse under the NPP government? No way,” he said.
Last week, the Ghana Lotto Operators Association levelled some allegations against the NLA.
They among other things accused the NLA of seeking to collapse the lottery industry and also outsourcing their mandate to KGL. But Razak dismissed such allegations, stressing that the NLA is not up for sale.
He said that the move made by the leadership of the NLA is to improve NLA’s revenue generation ability.
Source: mypublisher24.com
