Javier Ábrego, General Undersecretary of the Lotería Nacional de Beneficencia (LNB) of Panama, discussed the decision of the Ministry of Health (Minsa) to reactivate operations this week.
As a result of the decision, the first LNB draw will be carried out on February 12, which only gave lottery vendors a few days to sell tickets.
Vendors did ask for a reschedule, due to the limited amount of time, but the LNB will continue with its new plans.
Speaking to Telemetro, Ábrego said that they are ‘pleased that the Minsa has given us the green light to operate again’, even if they thought that they were going to restart in March.
He also explained that the General Director Gloriela Del Río worked for the restart of the lottery in Panama, but warned that due to the pandemic these sudden changes may happen again, as they are subject to the decisions made by local authorities.
Acknowledging the request from the local vendors, Ábrego assured that this type of decision is beyond LNB’s reach and that they follow the decisions of Minsa.
“We were doing everything we could to reopen, which is something that we eventually achieved. The Ministry of Health hosts conferences every Tuesday, and they communicated to us their decision to reactivate lotteries on Monday night,” he explained.
“We immediately started working on that. I know that this is a sudden decision that caught vendors by surprise. However, I must emphasize that this activity provides a livelihood for more than 16.000 people nationwide.”
