Lotto Marketing Companies have a role to create jobs - Offei Agyekum

Mr David Offei Agyekum, Executive Chairman of Super 4 Intelec Limited, a Lotto Marketing Company (LMC), said private lotto operators have a role to play in the creation of jobs.

This, he said, was to complement government’s efforts at solving the unemployment canker in the country and also to contribute meaningfully to national development.

Mr Offei Agyekum was speaking at the launch of the Licensed Lotto Operators and Agents Association (LLOAA).

He lauded government for introducing a framework to regularize the activities of operators in the country.

Mr Offei Agyekum, who is also the Founder of LLOAA, described the introduction of the licensing regime for Banker-to-Banker operators by the National Lottery Authority as a landmark initiative in the history of lottery operations since independence.

He said this was a golden platform initiated by NLA to grant the private sector players credibility and that the gesture was a clarion call to duty for members to be very transparent in all their engagements to ensure that no party suffered

“Banker-to-banker operators ply their trade secretly and are chased by members of the NLA and some other security operatives. This is going to be a thing of the past," he said.

The Executive Chairman called on LMSCs to fulfil their obligations by paying their required license fees to the NLA before the April 30th deadline.

“We do not want to go back to the dark days when people were chased around. We want all LMCs, Agents and Writers to comply with the NLA directives.”

Mr Offei Agyekum said his company was also in the process of registering its Writers and Agents in accordance with the new directives.

He disclosed that the NLA was in the process of introducing e-kiosk to phase out the current ones as it has shown the way of obtaining a permit to operate as an accredited lottery company.

Mr Kofi Osei-Ameyaw, the Director-General of the NLA, recently announced that his outfit would license private lotto operators to operate banker-to-banker in some approved areas.

It was also agreed that the NLA licensed banker-to-banker tickets or coupons should be printed by the operators and identifiable to the operators based on approval by the NLA.

Based on that, operators in a particular region shall not transact business in another region without approval from the NLA.