POKHARA, Sept 21: Lottery schemes with attractive gift offers have mushroomed in Pokhara with the arrival of the festive season and some of the lotteries are being used to fund academic programs at local colleges.
Lottery tickets are being sold at every neighborhood here. Operators of some lottery schemes have even set up ticket stalls in the nooks and corners.
Commercial complexes that people frequent in large numbers have proved to be the best places for lottery vendors to operate in.
The lottery tickets are being sold to willing buyers, but may of the vendors are forcing friends and relatives to buy.
Lottery tickets offering prizes ranging from motorcycles and scooters to wrist watches are being sold at Rs 100 per ticket. Each lottery scheme has the potential to raise hundreds of thousands of rupees.
Some schools and colleges have also started such schemes. Kanya Campus at Nadipur, Pokhara has started a lottery scheme to collect funds for running its MBS program. The campus is seeking to raise four million rupees through the sale of 40,000 lottery tickets.
“We started the scheme as we do not have sufficient funds to run MBS classes,” said Campus Principal Surendran Bhare. “We are raising funds to complete construction of a new building, furnish it and to set up a permament fund,” he added.
The campus has been running two stalls at Mahendrapul since Ghatasthapana to sell its lottery tickets. It has a entrusted students, teachers and board members with the task of selling the tickets.
In the past also, the campus initiated similar schemes to run its BA and BBA programs. “Back then, we collected a good sum of money from the lottery schemes,” Bhare said.
According to Krishna Tamrakar, accounts chief at the campus, the campus collected Rs 1.4 million for its BA program and Rs 1.8 million for the BBA program.
The campus is offering prizes including a motorcycle, a scooter and a laptop apart from watches as consolation prizes. Tamrakar said the prizes are worth Rs 700,000 in total.
The Lions Club of Pokhara is also running a lottery. The club has set up a stall at Chipledhunga, besides asking several individuals to sell tickets.
Club chairman Shyam Krishna Shrestha said the funds collected from the lottery will be used to run free medical camps and rescue victims of natural disasters.
He said the club plans to sell 10,000 tickets and raise a million rupees.
Prizes offered by the club include a motorcycle, a 29-inch television, a refrigerator and mobile phone sets. The prizes are worth Rs 250,000 in total.
While many people are buying lottery tickets because of the attractive prizes, others are buying under pressure from relatives and friends.
Ramesh Sunar of Hatiya, Makwanpur, said he bought a ticket at Chipledhunga hoping to win a motorcycle.
But Bikram Kunwar of New Road, Pokhara said he was forced to buy four tickets by friends. “Even school children are being forced to buy tickets. Festivals are expensive occasions, and these tickets have added to the financial burden of households,” he said.
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