Cancel KGL Contract To Save NLA – Lotto Vendors Urge Gov’t
Intense pressure is being mounted on the Government to with immediate effect to abrogate the contract of KGL Technologies Limited in order to save the National Lottery Authority (NLA) from eminent collapse.
According to the aggrieved members of the Lotto Marketing Companies (LMCs) Association the operations of KGL pose serious threat to the survival of NLA and the businesses of the thousands of their members.
At a Press Conference in Accra to brief the media on the content of a petition they have presented to the Presidency, the Ministry of Finance, Council of State and the Finance Committee of Parliament, the Spokesperson for the LMCs, Mr. Kwaku Antwi-Boadu lamented that KGL is collapsing the businesses of over 120,000 Lotto Marketing Companies.
He indicated that each LMC members had not less than 5 sub-agents who will also be rendered jobless, should the government fail to terminate the contract of KGL.
The Lotto Marketing Companies insisted that with good management and special attention from the government, NLA could generate more revenues to the state than KGL.
They disclosed that since the contract was awarded to KGL there had been several outstanding unpaid wins, non-availability of papers, receipts and other logistics for the lotto vendors to work with -all in a suspicious bid to frustrate them and ultimately kick the LMC members out of business.
The LMCs said that “under the National Lotto Act, (2006 ) Act 722, a lotto marketing account has been created for the mobilisation of revenue accrued from the sale of lotto but KGL was currently not paying money into that account.
A percentage of the money paid into the lotto account goes into the consolidated fund which is used for developmental projects but now the state is being denied that much-needed revenue”.
He explained that their members pre-finance the NLA and are expected to receive commissions but those commissions are not being paid for some time now.
Some of the Association members who spoke to the media, Mr. Emmanuel Nii Agyiri and Madam Elizabeth Mensah emphasized that the main aim of establishing NLA was to generate money for the development of Ghana and to create employment for the unemployed Ghanaians.
But the introduction of KGL in 2019 has since brought down all the activities of lotto operators in Ghana.
“We have complained several times to the Management to review the KGL contract but what we have observed is that it seems everything is planned from the top to enrich some people in power through KGL and to eventually sell out NLA to that private company. Another thing we have observed is that the continuous operation of KGL would encourage the operation of ‘banker-to-banker’, an illegal lotto operation.
KGL is the parent company of Keed Ghana Limited and is the digital lottery operator of the NLA 5/90 official short code, *959# and other digital platforms under the brand name Keed-NLA.
