Online gaming agents seek urgent meeting with PM

The On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­quest­ed an ur­gent meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­cus­ing the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board of avoid­ing en­gage­ment while mil­lions of dol­lars in state rev­enue are lost each week.

In a pub­lic ap­peal, OGAATT said it has made more than a dozen doc­u­ment­ed at­tempts to meet with the NL­CB’s new board since Ju­ly 25, 2025, with­out suc­cess. The as­so­ci­a­tion said NL­CB is los­ing more than $2 mil­lion a week due to what it de­scribed as im­pru­dent man­age­ment.

OGAATT said a meet­ing sched­uled for No­vem­ber 10 was can­celled two days ear­li­er, with NL­CB cit­ing short no­tice. The as­so­ci­a­tion re­ject­ed the ex­pla­na­tion, say­ing it had al­ready con­firmed its avail­abil­i­ty be­cause of the ur­gency of the is­sues fac­ing agents.

“Why are we be­ing avoid­ed?” OGAATT asked, de­scrib­ing lot­to agents as the most im­por­tant stake­hold­ers in the or­gan­i­sa­tion. The as­so­ci­a­tion said it had ex­er­cised re­straint for months but felt com­pelled to go pub­lic af­ter re­peat­ed failed at­tempts to se­cure di­a­logue.

The group said it has ev­i­dence of long-stand­ing is­sues af­fect­ing agents and rev­enue at NL­CB over the past decade and warned against a con­tin­u­a­tion of what it de­scribed as in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty and in­com­pe­tence un­der the pre­vi­ous board.

OGAATT said it was not seek­ing ad­di­tion­al spend­ing, but want­ed to present pro­pos­als to in­crease rev­enue and cut costs. It ac­cused the board of par­tial­i­ty, say­ing it ap­peared to be lis­ten­ing on­ly to in­di­vid­u­als who had been “cal­lous and vin­dic­tive” to­wards agents for near­ly a decade, while shut­ting out those di­rect­ly re­spon­si­ble for gen­er­at­ing rev­enue.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said there was grow­ing con­cern it would not re­ceive a meet­ing or a fair hear­ing any time soon, cit­ing what it de­scribed as a se­ries of shift­ing ex­cus­es for the board’s re­fusal to en­gage. These in­clud­ed claims that agents had failed to sub­mit in­for­ma­tion, were at­tempt­ing to “con­trol the board”, or were giv­en short no­tice for a meet­ing — all of which OGAATT re­ject­ed.

“All we are ask­ing for is re­spect­ful di­a­logue and de­liv­ery on the man­date giv­en by the pop­u­la­tion on April 28,” the as­so­ci­a­tion said.

The let­ter was signed by OGAATT pres­i­dent Dean Per­sad, who urged the Prime Min­is­ter to in­ter­vene to pre­vent fur­ther loss­es to the state and re­store con­fi­dence among agents.