Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new Talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, we do have at this point in time an interview for you. And we welcome to our program to discuss some of what's going on with lotto booth operators. Let's welcome to our program here this morning.
President of the Online Gaming Agents association of Trinidad and Tobago, that's Dean Passad. Good morning to you and welcome to our program.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Hi, good morning Satish, are you hearing me now?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Yes, we're hearing you loud and clear. Nice to have you with us here this morning. So there seems to be some problems with lotto booths and operators and there's the possibility, we know that a lot of booths serve much more purpose than just people can't play their mark. People do all kinds of business at lottery booths. So what's going on?
[00:01:03] Speaker C: Well, what is going on and has been going on for quite a while now, especially since the coming into existence the present board at nlcb.
There's a lot of harsh measures have been taken on the agents and they are, I mean they're demotivating us and demoralizing us with all these measures. And the latest one here now is we got a Release from an LCB dated 4th October 2024 where they have instituted some very, very harsh measures. They call it important policy updates effective December 1st. One of which is the first one they have here is discontinuation of proof of payment.
Now that in itself, I mean Satish, if you just listen to that statement, discontinuation of proof of payment, it means that they're telling us we cannot provide any proof of payment anymore to them. Because first of all they have, they have made it mandatory for us to do night safe deposit, not over the counter deposits anymore where you will get a physical deposit slip stamp and your money checked in front of you. And okay, all is as well, they have these night safe deposits now and you make up your own deposit slips. It's not stamped. So prior to this release they used to tell us well just send us this slip that you followed and we'll say okay, that you deposited the money.
Long story short, they are telling us we no longer have to do that. The payment must now be fully processed by the bank and received into agents accounts with nlcb.
Right. Now tell me something Satish, that is not, that is out of our hands. So because every bank has to process it and the bank is taking a week and two weeks to process it and you're telling us no, we want no Proof of payment from you. Then where are we, what are we going to prove to you? And you know, going to suppress my machine because the bank has not remitted the funds to you on time.
You get any picture there? Are you understanding what I'm saying?
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Understand what you're saying? I hate to deal with banks when it comes to actually going and have to do anything in the first place because of the time and it take banks so long I think to get things done, which is unacceptable in the digital age that we're in. But what could be the rationale behind the NLCB taking this decision? Is there money laundering taking place or is it.
[00:03:38] Speaker C: No, there's nothing whatsoever. They might have one incident or two incidents of agents depositing the money late and they're not receiving it on time for reasons that might or may be the, the fault of the agent. But they know broad bushing, broadbushing all agents into one group now and making it extremely difficult. Because if you saying that when you go into the bank physically you have some challenges there. You imagine when you send this money down the chute and there's nobody to receive that money, nobody to check that money in front of you. You have no proof of payment. Right. And the bank is telling you that if you don't deposit your money by 2pm on a Monday morning, you will suppress you. If you don't see the machine, the money in the account. And this is impossible. This is practically impossible.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: So just.
[00:04:39] Speaker C: Right, because.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Okay, so the problem here now is having to physically go to the bank. And I'm assuming it's waiting for the bank to validify what's going on.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: That's right. So this is what we are saying. When we deposit that money into the, into the Shoot Nina deposit box. We have nothing else to do with that. So if the bank does not remit your funds on time, you don't penalize us for that.
And now you come in with something further to tell the money by Monday 2pm and they are assuming that when we do that the bank will still remit the funds on time. People are depositing the money the Sunday before, on a Sunday evening, on a Sunday once they get their weekly settlement figures. And even in those events the banks are still not remitting the funds on time to nlcb.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Okay, so.
[00:05:32] Speaker C: So the problem is not with us. Deal with your bank or give us the option to do the over the counter deposit.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Okay, I want. Yeah, so I'm assuming that over the counter deposits was what took place before.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: That's right. And they never had all these issues, but for some reason they never fought the bank or they never negotiated properly with the bank to give us the option. I am not saying don't give us the the option to do night safe deposit and do not make it mandatory first. Because there are some agents who prefer the nightsave deposit is less stress for them. Right. And when you have the bank giving you over the counter deposit as well as the night save deposit, there's not that rush, there's not that big bulk of money to check. And for the banks to have to fight to make all these remittances to NLC be on time. Right. With the bank doing their own thing, you know. Okay. The bank will decide to check that money on their own time, not on NLCB's time. NLCB has to understand that.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: How many lotto agents do we have?
[00:06:42] Speaker C: We have just over 1200 agents.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: 1200 agents. So we're asking 1200 agents to avail themselves to this Dropbox thing.
[00:06:52] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: And deposit what I'm assuming could be considerable amounts of money.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: So now we have to deal with the issue of safety and security.
[00:07:05] Speaker C: That's right. So because they're giving us a specific time, we cannot do it on. We cannot stagger them. We cannot change our time or hours to, let's say to avoid being held up or to avoid the risk or to mitigate against the risk. We can't do that. We have to do it on the day, on the time and day that they specify. And I just one. That's just one item.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: The second one. Let's move on quickly. I just tell you the measures. Right. So the. At the end of the day, it's all harsh measures. They are saying the second one is mandatory payment. Mandatory payment when terminal limits are exceeded. Meaning they give you a limit for the day to do business with the killers. You're doing business by telling me, okay, once I. Once I do sales to the value of $10,000, go and deposit that in the bank. If you don't do it, we suppress your machines. Suppress me, that I lose income. NLCB lose income. Now NLCB is losing 92% of that income because we get only a 8% commission on overall sales. Right. So you as a businessman now telling me I'm leaving you to run my business. Well, I just see you reach $10,000, you got shut down that business. I'm going to deposit our money in bank. Let me see that money in the bank.
How people going to do that? How you going to. I mean you 2:00 in the evening, you, you, you, you reach $10,000.
What do you want me to do now?
Let me keep the money or whatever it is and I will deposit your money the following week as usual, over the counter or any night, safe deposit, whichever one I choose. Right. There's a third specification here. Non payment considered lasting. Now for nlcb, non payment is not that you're not paying them, you know, non payment for them means that they have not received the money in time. Again, that is not our fault as the bank's fault. So when they do what they call a sweep or a Thursday evening and they see Agent X money not in the bank, they shut down Agent X just like that, you know, Agent X now operator normal and bomb the machines are done.
Agent X now how to call them. Because they may call in, you know, and when you call them, satisf is story, you cannot get on to them. And they wouldn't admit to that, you know, they will say, oh, we have hotline and we have this and we have that, but it never works. Nothing works in this country, Nothing. They will tell you to have things in place, but when you test the system, it's not functioning. So they will consider that non payment, quote unquote, non payment, which really means they have not received your money. You have deposited the money, but they have not received it in time. They will consider that lasting. So like I said in an interview yesterday, playing police now. So they consider you steal their money, right? And they will do everything to make sure they get back their money. They send him one in the bank, you know, the bank taking the good time now to emit that fund to them. And the fourth provision is, provision is provision of a bond for all suppressed agents. So now if they suppress you unjustifiably, as I just explained in all those situations there, which is 99 of the time, to suppress you for no reason of yours, they're now telling you you have to take out a twenty five thousand dollar bond in order to be what you call reactivated, meaning to be back up and working and you have to pay a $1,000 reactivation fee. Now you tell me what sort of draconian measures are these on an agent? Who you want? Who is your main, I mean, who is your main player? Who is your most important and valuable asset in this whole industry?
Tell me how you want us to perform under these conditions. Well, I mean, what sort of business acumen is this? What, how prudent is this? Who running this thing?
[00:11:10] Speaker B: It seems as though from, from all that you've outlined that NLCB has put in place, it seems as if there is some attempt on their end to monitor closely their financials for one reason or another.
But the measures as you've outlined them will make more problems rather than create more solutions.
[00:11:34] Speaker C: Very, very, very true. That is what I was coming to tell you.
It has not yielded any success, any benefit, nothing.
As a matter of fact, it has created more chaos, more problems, more discontinue and dissatisfaction.
More work for both the agents and an lcv. It baffles the mind to know that they are seeing problems with this. And instead of fixing the problem, listening to what we have to offer, they are compounding the situation by these draconian measures.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Were there any discussions at all prior to these measures taken?
[00:12:15] Speaker C: None. None? None. They don't consider, they don't consult us, they don't call us. And then once we told them to consult us and make sure you tell us what is going on, we on the ground, we'll explain to you what is feasible, what is not feasible, what is practical, what is not practical, what we suggest.
And they said, okay, but they go ahead and they do what they want without consulting us. And then we reach ahead and then all these things and we talk about it. And then in nine days pass and that's the end of that. Because nobody is reigning in this, this, this board. They're doing as they want. And they're not Food and Management, the nlcb, the State, forget the agency. State is losing millions of dollars every week because of this archaic practice of suppressing agents, machines, right? You have an average of $25,000, right? You, and, and every week is 200 plus agents. So you're looking at $5 million per week in lost revenue. Right. And they feel that when they do that, the agents, they get fake. No. And they're going to pick up themselves and go in the shoot and, and pick up back the bargain money and say, look, look, the money here. So I ask any questions that is, are we now as agents to find ourselves going on the shoot with the bag of money? No, but that's the next thing we have to do, you know, go down with the shoot.
Because that's the only way they're telling us to discontinue proof of payment. So how am I going to. What when you tell me you have not received my money?
What do I tell you when you say you cannot prove to me that I don't want any proof from you that made the deposit. Let the bank tell me that.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Let me see if I understand the process that has been outlined. You have to deposit your Money by Monday, 2pm Yes, 2pm by Monday. How long does it usually take the bank to verify the deposits and to give you some kind of confirmation that here we're going on, everything is above board. Does the bank do that or.
[00:14:26] Speaker C: Yes, they don't do it. They don't call us. They don't tell us anything. We will just be operating our terminal, our machines, and then the machine go blank. They suppress the machine and they have a message called hotline immediately. So now you confuse. So the bank has not told NLCB anything. They have not contacted us and said anything to us. NLCB just see this on a, on their screen and they call the. Well, they don't call agent. They shut down the agent. So the agent now has to run around this place like a headless chicken all over. What are the shut down the machine for? Because the agent fully well knows that they deposited the money Sunday evening or Monday before 2pm what is the problem?
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah, so what's, what's the way forward now? What, what does the Lotto Booth association, the Online Gaming Agents association, plan to do or what can you do?
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Well, we. Well, right, so we had a meeting yesterday. We had a good turnout of agents and we outlined a couple plans that we have in the event that NLCB does not renege on these policies and until they have a meeting with us to discuss it further, we have decided that we will do a total shutdown.
The dates to be announced yet. But we waited on NLCB to see if they will respond to us. I sent out a request for a meeting.
That is one. That is one. You shut down two. We are in talks with a, with an attorney who has a copy of the recent, the most recent policies.
There's two. And we looking to do a placard protest as well. So those are three options that we have. But I am saying to you, Satish, I mean, we in 2024, right? We're not in 1824. In 2024, why do I have to go and burn tires and stand up on a hot sun and call a lawyer for a common sense issue, right? When, when the board could say, okay, Prasad, come here, let us see what's happening here. This is the situation, okay? You all want the option to do over the counter deposit. Because when we had that before, we really never had all these issues, right? You want to have a little extra time Monday, Tuesday, you stagger your hours so it won't be at Risk that song's feasible. We ask and we are giving them reasonable suggestions, you know, reasonable suggestions. And if you find a delinquent agent, right, and you must find that delinquent agent with, with proper evidence, you know, you can't just not see the money in your account and believe that the agents steal your money or they have not deposited the money on time. No, do your homework. Do some work. Do something more than suppressing machines, signing off on contests and competition and signing off on sponsorship. Do something more than that which is the backbone of the operations, which is the agents, which is, you know, the money involved. Do some work. Call the bank, say, listen, I want to know agents on so the money in the account and let the bank tell you, well, no, no, we check that money out and we open that shoot yet. And then you will know. Okay, well there's not the agent fault, but do not hold the agent accountable for everything that goes wrong when you're not performing your function.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Well, this from, from everything that you've outlined to me and from all the procedures and all the discussions and everything else, it seems as though this is a Peter pay for Paul kind of situation and Paul pay for all.
I mean that's what I surmised from the discussion that there are probably some agents who not doing what they're supposed to. And because of that, NLCB has imposed wide sweeping restrictions now and guidelines as a result of probably the bad actions of a few.
And it has created a situation where all of these agents that you're talking about now could find themselves in problems simply because of the new restrictions and the guidelines and the timelines for what you're talking about. But you say that there are three point possible courses of action that may come. So I guess this is where we're going to drop our interview. But you've explained fully all that's going on. So I guess we'll keep in touch and find out how this matter goes, whether or not the NLCB will back off or they'll keep the restrictions and how you all treat with it. I want to thank you for being with us here this morning.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: Just before I go, I just wanted to say that we are calling for them to have an agents conference which they have not had for the last 17 years. And that conference gives the agency the form and the voice to speak out and to tell them what is happening rather than just listen to me and feel, oh, I make a noise and I troublesome, you know, that kind of thing. So the agents conference is very, very important. They have promised that for the last three years and nothing came out of it. The last one we had was about 17 years ago. Yeah, that's it. Okay.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: I want to thank you for being with us. This is a pretty interesting story because if you have these 1200 agents taking action, the lives of many people are going to be disrupted in more than one way. I can tell you that. Because as much as people vilify playway and all these kinds of things, it's a part of a daily routine for many.
It's actually I know people who I don't want to say the level contributes significantly to their financial expenses one way or the other.
[00:20:14] Speaker C: Right. And I cannot see the sense really in shutting down a machine. Right. When you could negotiate with the agent whilst the machine is in operation. Suppression should not be a thing at all, at all unless it is extreme. It's an extreme case and they will know when these cases are extreme. Well, so suppression should not be a thing.
[00:20:34] Speaker B: One of the things that you said about this, this $25,000 bond, I don't know if that is going to be within the reach of many of these agents.
[00:20:42] Speaker C: Private. True. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Mr. Thank you so much for this. Yes. This morning.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. Satisfy. Have a good day.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: The best insight Instant feedback. Accountability. The all new Talk Radio Freedom 106.5.
