THE crowds are getting bigger at the God of Wealth Temple in Paya Terubong, Penang, following news that a devotee had won first prize in a lottery draw based on numbers he obtained there.

He got the lucky number of 7888 on Saturday from a special electronic equipment, which issues four-digit numbers, that was placed beneath a 5.5m-tall statue.

Kwong Wah Yit Poh reported that the devotee had donated RM1,500 to the temple after he won the fist prize.

However, it was not disclosed how much he won.

Following his stroke of good fortune, hundreds of visitors have been flocking to the temple to seek lucky numbers.

The crowds would grow so huge during the weekends, causing traffic jams around the area.

The temple opens at 8am daily but visitors would start queuing up the temple from 6am so that they could be the earlier ones to pray at the temple. Some Chinese believed it would be auspicious to be first one to pray to the statue.

Several travel agents have called up the temple as they were interested to organise trips there.

However, a temple chief, who had knowledge about the deity, said the deity discouraged gambling.

Instead, he said the deity preferred to help devotees who work hard and not take risks by gambling.

Other News & Views is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with this > sign, it denotes a separate news item.

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