The board of the Government Lottery Office yesterday approved a plan to issue four million additional tickets and split the first prize from 1 to 25 prizes, to ease the overpricing problem.
The additional tickets, which will boost the number in each round to 50 million, will be issued on behalf of charitable agencies. New tickets will be printed from November onward while the prize split will start in January, said Nakarin Mektrairat, a member of the boardA subcommittee will also be established to oversee the overpricing, empowered to terminate distribution contracts with violators.
Also chairing a team to sound social responses on the two and three-digit lotteries, Nakarin said 53 per cent of the respondents supported the scheme while 24 per cent opposed. The board may convene in the next few weeks to finalise the issue, after the Council of State ruled that the online lotto scheme is legal.
"We're not buying time, but it is an issue of readiness of information. We want it to be complete. Moreover, it remains unclear how to ease the social problems deriving from lotteries," he said.
Thawat Sathitwithaya, president of the lotto distributors association, yesterday issued a request to the office, asking for it to speed up the online lotto scheme. He said in a letter sent to all newspapers that the lotto-distributing machine is getting old and further delay would deprive the government of additional revenue, worth Bt784 million per round based on the estimated lotto sales of Bt2.8 billion.
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