MANAMA, 27 February — As the Haj has concluded, the focus has shifted to the Kingdom’s borders. Monday night the first buses of the Hamla began arriving in Dammam to cross the King Fahd Causeway into Bahrain. By early yesterday afternoon 15 large tour buses were halted at Saudi immigration on the Causeway waiting to clear.
Hamla Al-Shamasi, Hamla Al-Arqan, Hamla Al-Mashama, Hamla Al-Nasr — the buses were lined up front to back, packed with miserable passengers.
“It is terrible for us,” said Haji Ali, a returning Bahraini pilgrim. “Everything went so well up to now. The living quarters in Mina were excellent. The food and transport was good. But now we are very unhappy. We understand that one Hamla that arrived at 4 a.m. just departed at 12.30 p.m. It took us 18 hours to get here from Makkah and I can’t imagine how long we will wait now.”
Returning pilgrims were sleeping in the buses and stretched out in the baggage areas underneath the coaches. Also there was no food as there are no restaurants.
The pilgrims could eat only what food they carried with them. The restroom facilities too were inadequate. Inside the Saudi immigration areas at 2 p.m., 25 bus drivers were waiting, many with 50 or more passports in hand. Three immigration officials were processing the passports.
Everyone was frustrated. “How long have I been here? Too long. We came in at 10.30 and they haven’t even started to process our passports!” exclaimed one exasperated driver.
Arab News came on a Saudi-Bahraini Transport bus with 22 passengers. It took an hour and ten minutes to process our bus through Saudi immigration. In the time we were waiting the lines for individual cars and SUVs increased from 11 to 15 vehicles in length.
On the Bahrain side the officials were working at top speed. Our bus was processed through immigration in 15 minutes. The immigration official said that he believed that since the start of his shift at 7 a.m. they had processed at least 20,000 passports.
Next came the Bahraini Customs clearance. It took 20 minutes to unload, x-ray and reload the baggage and be on our way. Total time to clear the Bahraini formalities — 35 minutes.
“I have been working in Bahraini Customs 15 years and it is always difficult in these days,” said one official. “They take so long to clear on the Saudi side that the pilgrims are exhausted by the time they reach us. There is no customs clearance on the Saudi side but there is coming in to Bahrain.
Since yesterday we have processed about 45 buses and we are exhausted. But the holdup for the pilgrims returning home is not with us.”
Officials said approximately 56,000 pilgrims crossed the Causeway to Bahrain on Monday after immigration clearance on the Saudi side.
