Aqra bil- Malti
Nikola was among the first three children at the San Ġużepp Institute who almost 100 years ago extracted the first lotto number at the Floriana Granaries.
“They took us to Floriana, we were blindfolded and we extracted the first number – it was 86”.
In a TVM archives interview, Nikola had also described the crowd that gathered on the Granaries. “I kept myself interested and continued to play the winning numbers. I still do”.
At that time, lotto receivers issued some three quarters of a million tickets a week.
This custom has remained with us throughout the years and did’t even stop during the Second World War, however, it is currently suspended due to the Covid-19 virus.
Arthur Massa spend a lifetime at a lotto branch and says he doesn’t recollect such a situation. He had also researched the lotto history in Malta.
“Lotto in Malta started after the First War. Up to 1917, there was a practice that rich families send their people at the wharf with the workers to play the Italian ‘prima’ because there was no lotto in Malta. Huge money used to be sent abroad and the most vulnerable, including the poor, were spending their salary to participate in this lotto”.
Maltco Lotteries chief executive Vasileios Kasiotakis said that some 200 lotto outlets and around 100,000 persons play in their competitions each week.
“When considering the agents, their assistants and our employees, all together 700 people are affected, including personel, agents, assistants, and suppliers of the company.”
Mr Kasiotakis said that tickets already purchased before the issue of the legal notice which closed the lotto branches will remain valid until the lotto and other lotteries resume.
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