NIGHT DEPOSITS NOT SAFE

Lotto agents have threatened to close down their machines if steps are not taken to ensure their safety.

President of the Lotto Agents Association (TTLAA) Allen Campbelle has called on Finance Minister Colm Imbert to intervene with regard to First Citizens' night safes for agents. According to Cambell the bank now insists that agents use its safes at night time to deposit their takings at the end of each day.

Agents are endangered when they are asked to make night-safe deposits instead of in-bank deposits, Cambell argued.

“It is callous and unreasonable to want to introduce such a policy in this crime-ridden country of ours. We put our lives at risk when deposits are made in the night.”

The agents would prefer to deposit the cash inside the bank, with staff present.

If the bank does not deal with the issue, Campbelle said, the TTLAA will call for a total shutdown of machines nationwide.

He described the move by First Citizens as unfair and dangerous. The bank, he said, has been forcing agents to use the night safes since March of 2019.

Campbelle called on Imbert and the National Lotteries Control Board (NLCB) to meet agents to discuss the issue.

The TTLAA wants Imbert to direct First Citizens reverse the new "life-threatening" policy and to allow agents to continue in-bank deposits, which it says are much safer, more convenient and secure for them.

“We are appealing to the minister and First Citizens to consider the lives and limbs of the agents,” Campbelle said.

Accuracy is another issue for First Citizens, he said.

“When you deposit in a night safe you are sacrificing accuracy, as many times the figures do not correspond with the cash that is registered on the machines, and this takes a couple of days to be rectified,” he said.

The bank automatically shuts down agents’ machines when that happens and naturally, Campbelle said, agents suffer a loss of income as a consequence.

When agents go straight to the bank counter, he said, they can immediately deal with any inaccuracies.

He complained that the NLCB was not keeping agents abreast of the status of the move by First Citizens, and neither was First Citizens willing to meet with the association, as it says its client is NLCB and not the agents.

“I would like to remind First Citizens that the agents act on behalf of the NLCB. We are the ones making the deposits, and we are the ones being endangered. We also want to remind First Citizens that their argument is nonsensical, as a vast majority of their clients have workers making deposits on their behalf, just like the NLCB.”

Campbelle said the TTLAA wrote to First Citizens in March on the issue but no date had been set for a meeting thus far.

When asked whether the shut-down of legal lotto/play whe vendors would push punters into the hands of illegal operators, Campbelle said he could not comment on that issue but that, in general, illegal gambling had affected the legal agents in a big way.

“We raised this issue of illegal operators with NLCB in 2010 when there were just about 30 illegal operators and today there are some 300 in this country,” he said.

He said when Government imposed a "win tax" on Lotto winners in September of 2018, the move sent many gamblers back to the illegal operators.

“The illegal operators give players $36 to every one dollar played and agents pay $26 for each dollar played,” he said.

Calls to corporate departments at First Citizens and NLCB were unanswered.