By IANS,
Kuala Lumpur : A 120-year-old Hindu temple in Malaysia, one of the oldest in the Muslim-majority country, has been granted $175,000 in state funds.
The Negri Sembilan state government gave the funds to the Dewi Sri Maha Mariamman temple, located in Pajam near Seremban, to help regularise the ownership, The Star said.
Temple committee president A. Thirumal Saamy expressed his community’s gratitude to Chief Minister Mohamad Hasan for the gesture.
The government funds, which covered 80 percent of the land premium, have helped significantly reduce the burden on the temple’s coffers, Saamy said Friday.
“After countless appeals over the years, we are pleased to have had the land premium brought down to RM100,000. Words cannot express our relief and gratitude,” Saamy said.
“We have been trying to secure the land title for the past 17 years as the hefty premium was impossible to raise,” he said.
The temple is situated on a former rubber estate and most of the devotees had worked on the estate earlier.
Saamy, who has been at the helm of the committee for six years, said he was proud that the temple would soon be legally their own after years of waiting.
“Now, all that’s left is the land title which will soon be granted to us,” he said.