Letters to the editor

The Sunday Times Financial Times feature “Feeling lucky? Try your luck at winning a lottery” on October 15, was not only informative and educative but also shocking. Shocking because it revealed that “out of the total possible 25 million lottery tickets that could have been printed for the Mahajana Sampatha, only around 5 million tickets are printed and put into circulation….”

It is now crystal clear that a vast number of people who buy the Mahajana Sampatha lottery are taken for a ride! It is just as plain as that.

It is not all who buy a sweep ticket blindly. Some are guided by what they consider are their lucky numbers and letters. Some even get innocent children to pick sweep tickets for them. Why all this? Are they just giving up their hard-earned money for charity? No, all are keen to win, if not the jackpot, something big.

It is common knowledge that a vast number of poor people who can ill-afford to buy sweep tickets do so thinking that Lady Luck would smile at them one day.

It is true that there are other beneficiaries from the sweep business like the district dealers and even humble sweep ticket sellers. But with the introduction of several kinds of sweep tickets not only are public pavements blocked by sweep ticket selling outlets but they also contribute to noise pollution. Also what about the real jackpot winners? Has any organization ever conducted a proper survey to find out what percentage of them have meaningfully utilized their sudden windfall. I am sure this could be more than revealing.

I think The Sunday Times as a truly national newspaper has done a tremendous service to society by letting people know that they are more often than not taken for a ride when they buy a Mahajana Sampatha sweep ticket. Let your sister paper Irida Lankadeepa kindly publish a translation of this article soon. I think I am failing in my duty if I do not congratulate both Natasha Gunaratne and Chathuri Dissanayake for their excellent piece of writing.