The next time you fill in a raffle coupon to win a prize at a commercial outlet make sure you have written your name and contact number or email correctly.

Prizes worth QR200,000 ($55,000) that include items like TV sets and phones, electrical appliances and even gold coins remain unclaimed by winners in raffle draws held by different commercial outlets.

The Ministry of Economy and Commerce that conducted a raid on outlets to know the results of raffle draws they held as part of promotion in recent times, discovered that items worth QR200,000 won by people lay unclaimed. The Ministry has collected the items from these outlets and will now make sure that they are given away to the local charities since there are no claimants for them. The prizes total 300 and they include electrical and home appliances, TV sets, mobile phone handsets, gold coins as well as cash vouchers.

The prizes, according to the Ministry, could not be collected by many of the winners because they wrote their names and contact details on raffle coupons wrongly.

In several other cases the coupons had names and contact numbers but the information was incorrect, the Ministry said. It has urged people to pay attention and fill in the raffle coupons with care. The Ministry has a department that provides approvals to commercial outlets to hold raffle draws as part of promotion. The department has detailed record.

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Its officials recently launched an inspection campaign to see if the prizes of those draws were given away to the winners. The Ministry said it is its job to make sure that if a commercial outlet holds a raffle draw it gives away the prizes on offer to the winners.

But its inspectors, during their latest campaign, discovered that several outlets that had held the draws were still keeping the prizes with them.

On enquiry, these outlets revealed that their winners couldn’t be contacted due to the above-cited problems. The ministry said in a statement yesterday that raffle coupons for draws given away by commercial outlets to people are approved by it.

One needs to fill in simple information such as the name of the person and how he or she can be contacted.

The ministry has warned commercial outlets not to distribute raffle coupons to the people without their approval.

This is, apparently, to make sure that the coupons have necessary columns for people to fill in their names and contact details.