The Finance Minister-designate, Ken Ofori-Atta has said that there is no policy to sell the National Lotteries Authority (NLA) to KGL Technology Limited, a licensed online lotto marketing company.

According to him, the Finance Ministry is instead of selling NLA, deliberating on methods to improve the bond between the betting business and National lotteries.

“We actually Mr Chairman, have also looked at the betting business to really see how between betting and National lotteries we can do a lot better than we are doing,” he said during his vetting.

He added that the two entities “potentially co-form the basis for supporting our sports and culture and we need to completely overhaul another way in which NLA and betting operate and so we expect to see some major changes so that we can reap through productivity from these two areas.”

Mr Ofori-Atta was responding to a question asked by a member of the Parliament Appointment Committee, Muntaka Mubarak on whether or not he was aware that KGL has taken over the operations of NLA by raising funds to pay off the indebtedness of NLA

He said, “Mr Chairman these things get into details that I can verify. I know we as an entity here has been quite disturbed with the way national lotteries have been operating these three years and subsequent changes are occurring.”

After the Authorities of NLA failed to pay winning draws from as far back as April 2020, It resulted in attacks on the lives of the staff of the authority in places like Tamale in the Northern Region.

Workers of NLA earlier on Monday, March 1, 2021, withdrew their services to protest what they say is the continuous nationwide attack on them due to the failure of the Authority’s management to pay lottery winners.

This act by the protesters led to the formation of a three-member committee to probe allegations of nonpayment of big wins across the country by the Director-General of the National Lottery Authority (NLA) Kofi Osei Ameyaw.

The situation forced the National Labour Commission (NLC) to summon the NLA staff union and Director General of the Authority, Kofi Osei Ameyaw, to find a resolution to the concerns by the aggrieved staff.

At the hearing, the Director-General explained to the NLC that “ in this day and age where cyber-crime has become a big issue, big wins are thoroughly investigated, verified and validated before payments of the said wins.”

Mr Osei Ameyaw has since left the Authority after his one-year contract extension expired.

The NLC upon hearing the two sides described the protest by the staff as wrongful and unfair, and thus directed them to resume work immediately.

The KGL Technology Limited, however, stepped in to resolve the matter by releasing monies to the Authority to pay all outstanding wins of the NLA.