Folks,

This is from the Independent's Monday (19 March 2001)Issue.


INDEPENDENT VIEW

The Hajj palaver

Come to think of it! It is now about two weeks since the annual Hajj in
Saudi Arabia came to an end. Yet up to the time of going to press, there
were still some Gambian pilgrims stranded in Jeddah, anxiously waiting to be
flown home. This has no doubt caused both the stranded pilgrims and their
families back home quite a lot of inconvenience. Although this has now
become an unorthodox part of the annual Hajj ritual, yet no concrete steps
seem to have been taken by the authorities to give our tired and worn out
pilgrims a break from this trauma year after year. Their families who wait
at home are also tested to the hilt.

For the past few years, pilgrims have been experiencing unnecessary delays
either in their departures to Saudi Arabia or on their return after the
Hajj. While it is good to have competition in the Hajj package, like all
other business ventures, it is also extremely important that proper
screening is done by the authorities responsible for the Hajj to ensure that
it is only those with the financial and other logistical capabilities who
are given the license to participate in the Hajj. Let us not forget that it
is mostly the old and frail who normally form the bulk of the pilgrims every
year, and those people cannot stand all the rigour and trauma associated
with such delays.

Therefore it is the duty of the authorities to make strict conditions to be
met by all travel agents before they embark on the Hajj business. It is just
not enough for the travel agents to be able to meet their financial
obligations to the government to qualify them to be entrusted with the lives
and convenience of pilgrims. One can imagine the sort of inconvenience and
trauma the stranded pilgrims may have gone through in Saudi Arabia while
everybody else has left. It is also very likely that they were responsible
for their own feeding and other logistics, which means that many of them may
have already burst their own meagre budgets.

Some of them may have had barely enough money to sustain them for the entire
Hajj period let alone add several more days to that. In fact many of them
may have already used whatever money they had left for some shopping in
anticipation of their timely flights home as they were promised by the
travel agents, only to realize that they were not coming back on time. Apart
from the pilgrims' trauma and inconvenience relatives and friends back home
have also been suffering. You can imagine that each time they were given a
new date for their arrival, they would organize transport to the Airport as
well as provide food and drinks for the numerous guests assembled to welcome
them, only to be told that they were not coming.

This kind of a situation should have never been allowed to happen let alone
become an annual nightmare. It is therefore the duty of the authorities
responsible for the Hajj to ensure that it was only those travel agents with
the capacity and capability to take care of their pilgrims with the minimum
of inconvenience, who are to be allowed to participate in the Hajj. Hajj
packers should grow out of this inadequacy.

 =======================================================================

Up to the time I am writing this, these innocent Hajj pilgrims are still
stranded in Saudi Arabia. Folks, this is a very serious and sorry state of
affairs. I hope those who might have any suggestions that the state could do
to ensure that is somewhat regular occurance is put to an end permanently.

I remember a few years ago when the government banned the charter, by
private operators such as Globe travel agency, of airlines for the
transportation of pilgrims to mecca, and instead sell tickets on behalf of
the GIA, there was an outcry and a lot of hulla baloo from people who
thought state regulation was uncalled for.

Now that the self regulation and the right to choose has clearly failed who
should come to the aid of these poor pilgrims and their families? While some
consider it the duty of government to charter a plane to bring back the
pilgrims at the expense of the tax payers, others believe that that should
not be the case as governement was taken out of the equation a few years
ago.

I hope you will ponder over this and offer suggestions to prevent this very
unfortunate situation.

Best wishes, KB Jobe

"There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see,
yet small enough to solve"

                  (MIKE LEAVITT)

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