Many among thousands of Haj pilgrims, who performed the annual Islamic ritual in Saudi Arabia this year, claimed to have been defrauded by hundreds of ill-regulated private Haj companies working in the country.
According to Pakistani officials in Saudi Arabia, of the total 750 Haj firms at least 530 were able to take most of about 75,000 pilgrims to the holy city of Makkah in 2014.
“This year, we received several complaints from the pilgrims against the private sector companies,” Director General Haj Syed Abu Ahmed Akif told Pakistan Today.
Fluent in Arabic, Akif is based in Jeddah but is presently in Pakistan on a six-day personal-cum-official visit.
Most of the complaints, the official said, were about issues relating to the quality of accommodation, food and transport facilities that the private companies had pledged at the time of booking but failed to deliver on ground. “We made the Haj firms to refund at least Rs 23 million to the complainants,” said the director general.
Routinely, he said, Haj was refrained from lodging complaints against these companies. “It is a kind of cultural norm here that pilgrims don’t complaint on return to appease the reference they have used to approach the Haj firm,” he said.
The government, however, has its own monitoring system to keep check on the private sector.
“We have a proper monitoring team to see whether or not these private firms are providing the pledged facilities to the pilgrims during the Haj,” Akif said. “Our teams take real time photos of Haj is to collect evidence of an irregularity,” the DG added. This year, he said, even the government’s monitoring teams were under surveillance for their performance. “We had pinned the map at 500 spots to depict the sites our monitoring teams had visited,” the official said.
Akif believes that the private sector entities which deal with Haj affairs should be tightly regulated to make the Haj affair more transparent.
“Especially, when it comes to financial matters,” the DG said.
Against the package of Rs 250,000 a Haji avails while going through official channel, the private companies charge the pilgrims with a huge sum ranging from Rs 5,00,000 to Rs 6,50,000 for the ritual.
The expenses a pilgrim pays covers air freight, accommodation and other deductions, the Saudi government makes on account of compulsory Haj Dues (CHDs).
“There is a strong need to make this package transparent,” Akif opined.
Accommodation, the DG said, was the only head under which the public and private cost of Haj had a difference. “They should get their agreements with the hotels (in Makkah) attested from the government,” the official suggested.
Further, he said, the allotment of Haj quota to the private companies was based on hereditary system instead of merit. Generations of certain families, he said, were operating these companies. “People, having availed the official Haj package (Rs 250,000), have started questioning the huge amount (up to Rs 650,000) the private sector is charging from a pilgrim,” Akif said.
The official also hinted that the government of Pakistan had all the capacity to operate Haj operations single-handedly. Illustrating, he said, in Malaysia and Indonesia 100 and 90 per cent of Haj operations were being run by the government. In Pakistan, this percentage stands at 50 per cent.
