National Lottery Board Slams DA Accusations

August 22 - A fortnight ago, South Africa's Democratic Alliance wrote to the minister of trade and industry for the third time requesting an independent inquiry into the Lotto. This followed numerous reports by charities who claimed to have not received the funds that the National Lottery Board said had been paid out.

At the time, a representative of the Democratic Alliance, Janet Semple said: "We will continue to write to him as we accumulate evidence until it becomes impossible for him not to act. The NLB and the minister have no right to treat the charities who worked so hard to care for South Africa's marginalized citizens with such contempt, or to refuse to account to the public about how lotto money was spent."

This week, the National Lottery Board slammed these accusations and said that the South African media and the Democratic Alliance had a "selective understanding of the facts".

The player relations and media liaison manager for the National Lottery Board, Sershan Naidoo said in a statement: "The DA and media reports claim that the NLB was 'declaring unpaid funds as having been paid out'. The board would like to assure the public that this statement is unfounded."

Naidoo continued: "If the DA and the learned journalists who reported had made the effort to read the NLB's annual report - available on the NBL website - they would know that the board identifies statistics in terms of allocations made by the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund (NLDTF) to good causes."

Naidoo also said that before making unfounded comments and statements about the payouts, the Democratic Alliance and the media should have approached the National Lottery Fund to make a comment too.

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