My wife and I had planned to perform Haj this year. I was very pleased to hear the announcement regarding Haj policy for 2011 made by Religious Affairs Minister Khursheed Shah.
He announced that charges for Haj had been reduced by Rs 26,000 as compared to last year. We arranged Rs 424,000 and went to National Bank of Pakistan, Main Branch, Lahore, asking for Haj application forms. The bank staff told me that the forms would be provided only after I showed them Machine Readable Passports (MRP). I showed them the receipt of passport applications dated 19 February, 2011, but they refused to give us Haj application forms without MRP.
I am an assistant professor and my wife is a doctor at Punjab Institute of Cardiology. We both had taken short leave from our jobs. After hearing this verdict, we rushed to the passport office. Though date of delivery written on my receipt was March 12, 2011, but they had told me during an earlier visit that the passport delivery date had been extended to 22nd April.
I saw a notice displayed outside the delivery clerk’s window that only those passports can be collected for which applications were received prior to 14 February 2011. I confirmed this from the person delivering the passports and I was asked to contact them in May 2011. As I was leaving the passport office, an agent approached me. I told him that I did not need his help because I had applied for my passport on Feb 19 and it was not ready for delivery yet.
He said he could even bring passports for which applications had been submitted in March 2011. He demanded Rs 500 for the passports applied prior to 26 February, 2011, and Rs 2,000 for the passports applied in March 2011. Later, he agreed on taking Rs 500 and brought my passport in five minutes. And I paid him Rs 500 as promised.
Then we went back to NBP to collect the Haj application forms. We were again shocked to hear from the bank staff that there were two types of forms green category in which residence would be provided within 2,000 meters of Haram and white category under which residence would be beyond 2 km from Haram.
Charges for these categories were Rs 222,047 and Rs 212,900, respectively. We decided in favour of green category. While reading the instructions to fill in the forms, we were flabbergasted to read that each Haj applicant would have to arrange additional Saudi riyals 1,000 for his expenditures during Haj because, contrary to previous years, the Ministry of Religious Affairs would return no money out of the deposited amount.
We came to know that actual expenditure for each Haj applicant was Rs 245,000 (Rs 222,000 plus Rs 23,000 (SR 1,000), which was Rs 7,000 more than that of the previous year. So all the claims made by Religious Affairs Minister Khursheed Shah proved false.
FARHAN IQBAL
Lahore
