LAHORE: Ministry of Religious Affairs has started a refunding campaign to the Pakistani pilgrims who were not provided with the earlier promised train facility at Mina, and later while they performed the ritual. It was learned that so far, MoRA has refunded SR 10.75 million to 43,000 Pakistani pilgrims.
Officials in the ministry said around 58,000 Pakistani pilgrims, who performed the pilgrimage under the government’s Hajj Scheme-2017, were not provided with the train facility despite the fact that they had paid for the tickets.
Adding that the remaining would soon be compensated, the officials said most of the pilgrims have already received the money during their stay in Saudi Arabia.
The refund was brought into consideration after the pilgrims had launched protests after they had suffered a lot of problems during their Hajj performance. Several Pakistani pilgrims fainted and some fell ill.
Earlier, the religious affairs ministry kept claiming that the pilgrims were provided with the best accommodation and transport facilities.
To avoid criticism, the ministry kept blaming the Saudi government for the mismanagement.
Later, the Saudi embassy rejected the allegations and clarified that it was the responsibility of the Pakistani government to provide proper facilities to its pilgrims.