IT'S ABOUT UNEMPLOYMENT, AND NOT ABOUT THE LAW

What the National Lottery Authority (NLA) and the Supreme Court have succeeded in doing is add to the already sky-high rate of unemployment drowning the people of this country.

The evidence of unemployment can be seen in every nook and cranny of this country; armed robbery, beggers littering the streets, 419 and recently sakawa. Unemployment is a pressing problem that needs pragmatic steps in solving it, and not adding to it. Granted, the Ghana Lottery Operators Association (GLOA), in other words the Private Lotto Operators (PLO) have genuine short-comings that need to be looked at (failure to pay tax and winners' difficulty and sometimes inability to claim rewards among others), but banning it is not the best way to look at it.

The Director of Finance and Administration of NLA, Mr. Charles Mensah, was qouted by the July 23rd edition of the Ghanaian Times newspaper as saying that the Supreme Court's ruling "...will bring sanity in to the lotto industry because in most countries it is only one authority that regulates the industry". If the NLA wants to be that ONE authority regulating the lotto industry and bringing "sanity" into it, surely sitting down with the GLOA/PLO to talk it out is the best way to go about it. All other industries all over the world and in this country have both government and private sectors; health, education, agriculture, construction, finance, just to mention a few. Why can't the lotto industry have a private sector too? What are the almost 500,000 people (qouting from the Ghanaian Times) supposed to do? get into sakawa, 419, armed robbery or join the beggers on the already stampeded streets?

Mr. Mensah is again qouted as saying that the ruling is a victory for the industry, but, what industry is he talking about if I'm allowed to ask? How could the industry have won any victory when one side of it, catering for almost 500,000 people (not to talk of their individual famillies) have lost the source of their very livelihood? Saying it was a victory for the NLA and not the industry as a whole would have been more appropriate.

Please, for the sake of the people who get their daily bread through the GLOA/PLO, put "politricks" and tribal whatevers aside and do something about this issue as soon as possible.

JUDITH TETTEH GHANA INSTITUTE OF JOURNALISM P. O. BOX 667 OSU,ACCRA